Funder Collaborative Civic Science Fellow

A collaboration of funders with a shared interest in the relationship between science and society invite applicants for a Funder Collaborative Civic Science Fellow. The Fellow will work for 12 months to advance emerging collaborative work among relevant programs at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, The Kavli Foundation, and the Rita Allen Foundation.

The Fellow will be part of the inaugural class of Civic Science Fellows, which aims to build the capacity of emerging leaders, networks, and institutions working to meaningfully connect science and society in a time of rapid change.

The need for a more robust, mutual, and equitable relationship between science and society has never been more urgent. Individuals, communities, and our global population face accelerating and increasingly complicated challenges. Rapidly evolving, highly complex science contributes to these challenges and holds the promise of shaping solutions—gene editing, artificial intelligence, and ocean conservation are just a few examples of acutely relevant, socially charged, and potentially transformative areas of research.

The research community must understand and respond to the societal context in which it exists if it is to remain a relevant and robust element of society. Charting the course for this science in democratic societies requires not only technical scientific answers, but also deep engagement with issues including ethics, community values and needs, economics, and public health.

The funders in the collaborative are brought together by a shared vision, one that we bring in our efforts to serve science communication, public engagement, science, and the public broadly. We believe science is one of our most important tools for developing knowledge about ourselves and understanding the world around us; however, it has become increasingly viewed as separate from society.

Many science engagement efforts seek to focus on specific effects of this disconnect (e.g., threats to federal funding for basic science). We, with our partners in the field, have begun to explore what might be the primarycausesof the problem, and the opportunities they present: to form new connections and collaborations that can fuel more meaningful, inclusive integration of science in society.

This shared understanding of the opportunity space has served as a catalyst for an emerging funder collaborative. We are in the position to build bridges and leverage different expertise and resources across sectors, from our organizations and others, in order to more effectively serve the scientific ecosystem as well as diverse communities affected by scientific discovery and application. A process of shared learning and exploration can accelerate our common understanding of approaches and techniques to effectively address the roots of the disconnect between science and society, as well as help us identify areas of shared collaboration or coordination for greater impact in supporting those leading, innovating, and working at this interface.

The initial cohort of Science in Society Collaborative members are philanthropies, each with individual missions and focus, but with substantial overlap in how we approach science engagement. We all support efforts that promote science as a way of knowing. We all believe that a lack of adequate knowledge about science within communities is not sufficient to explain the growing communication gap between scientists and society.

We all recognize the need to diversify who is engaged in the scientific conversation. We all recognize…