Welcome to the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative
Welcome to the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI), a program of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) with support from the W.M. Keck Foundation. Launched in 2003, NAKFI has been catalyzing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of science, engineering and medicine, and enhancing education among researchers, funding organizations, and universities. We also support scientific communication by awarding four $20,000 cash prizes to those who bring science, engineering and medicine to the public through books, newspapers, television, radio, films and online media. We are an important component of the pursuit of discovery that President Obama, in his speech at the NAS annual meeting in spring of 2009, said is necessary to fuel our prosperity and success as a nation for the next 50 years.
NAKFI’s objectives include enhancing the climate for conducting interdisciplinary research, and breaking down related institutional and systemic barriers. We work toward these objectives by harnessing the intellectual horsepower of approximately 150 of the brightest minds from diverse backgrounds who apply to attend our annual “think-tank” style conference to contemplate the real world challenges of our day; and by awarding seed grants – on a competitive basis – to conference participants to enable further pursuit of bold, new ideas and inspirations generated at the conference. The generative ideas that surface in this process are the impetus for collaborative efforts with new partners toward new frontiers, and often remind us that the whole is better than the sum of its parts.
If you’re interested in interdisciplinary discovery and being part of an intellectually stimulating community, sign up for our email alerts and apply to attend our next conference. Conference attendees comprise the “Futures Network,” a virtual community to connect with fellow NAKFI alumni, share research ideas, search for collaborators and funders, and further the breakthroughs discovered through the NAKFI experience.
2009 National Academies Communication Award Winners and Finalists Announced
BOOK WINNER
Neil Shubin for his delightful, intellectually challenging view of evolution from primitive fish to humans by a scientist who finds fossils in the most uncomfortable places and chronicles it all in Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (Pantheon Books).
NEWSPAPER/MAGAZINE WINNER
Mark Johnson for his clear reporting on the cutting edge of science, engaging key researchers as they try to open new medical horizons by reprogramming human cells, in his series Targeting the Good Cell (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
TV/RADIO/FILM WINNER
Larry Adelman (series creator, executive producer), Llewellyn M. Smith (co-executive producer), and Christine Herbes-Sommers (series senior producer) for putting a human face on one of the most complex issues in public health -- the impact of racial and socio-economic inequities on health -- in Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (California NewsReel in association with Vital Pictures Inc.)
ONLINE/INTERNET WINNER
Vikki Valentine (digital science editor), Alison Richards (deputy science editor), and Anne Gudenkauf (science editor) for NPR News' Climate Connections, a yearlong multimedia journey to explain the impacts of global climate change with well-reported stories from around the world (NPR News in partnership with National Geographic).
BOOK FINALISTS
Thomas Hager, author of The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, A Doomed Tycoon, and the Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler (Crown/Harmony Books).
Kenneth R. Miller, author of Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul (Penguin Group USA).
ONLINE FINALIST
Andrew Revkin, environment reporter, author of Dot Earth blog (The New York Times).
NAKFI Complex Systems Attendees Publish Research in PNAS
Complex Systems attendees Nathan Eagle and David Lazer published the latest findings of their research on the potential for data collected from mobile phones to provide insight into the relational dynamics of individuals in the September 8, 2009 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
$1 Million Awarded for Complex Systems Research Projects
On May 7, 2009, the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative announced the recipients of its 2008 Futures Grants, each awarded to support interdisciplinary research on complex system such as ecosystems, financial markets, communication networks, and biology. The 23 projects chosen represent a wide range of approaches to such research, which was the subject of the sixth annual Futures Conference. "We have selected many bold and innovative proposals and believe these collaborations will result in promising findings," said H. Eugene Stanley Ph.D., director, Center for Polymer Studies, Boston University, and the 2008 conference chair. These competitive seed grants aim to fill a critical gap for research on new ideas. Major federal funding programs do not typically provide support in areas that are considered risky or unusual. The Futures Grants allow researchers to start recruiting students and postdoctoral fellows, purchasing equipment, and acquiring preliminary data all of which can position the researchers to compete for larger awards from other public and private sources.
Complex Systems Conference Booklet Released
At the conference, participants were divided into twelve interdisciplinary task groups. The groups spent nine hours over three days exploring diverse challenges at the interface between science, engineering, and medicine. The objectives of the task groups were to spur new thinking, to have people from different disciplines interact and to forge new scientific contacts across disciplines. Participants were placed in one task group and remained in that group for the entire conference. Each group spent a good portion of the conference developing a possible scientific plan to solve an outstanding challenge posed to it. The composition of the groups was intentionally diverse, including researchers from science, engineering and medicine, as well as representatives from public and private funding organizations, university and government leadership and science journals. On Saturday morning, the task groups gave a short report out (5-6 minutes each group) to share where they were. A more extensive report-out was provided on Sunday morning (about 12 minutes including Q&A). Each task group includeed a graduate student in a university science writing program. Based on the group interaction and the final briefings, the students wrote a group summary, which wasreviewed by the group members. These summaries describe the problem and outline the approach taken, including what research needs to be done to understand the fundamental science behind the challenge, the proposed plan for engineering the application, the reasoning that went into it and the benefits to society of the problem solution. The summaries are available online and as a publication Complex Systems through National Academies Press.
The seventh year's program will provide an opportunity for researchers from different disciples to focus on new possibilities in the field of synthetic biology. The conference will be held at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies in Irvine, California on November 19-22, 2009. The conference will start with a welcome reception on Thursday evening, November 19th, and formally open on Friday, November 20th at 8am. The conference will end on Sunday at noon (an optional lunch will be available at noon). Conference participants are expected to attend the entire conference.
To help overcome differences in terminology used by researchers in various fields, plenary "tutorials" will be given by experts before the conference. Each expert will provide an overview of his or her field in language that other researchers unfamiliar with the discipline can understand. These tutorials will be webcast in September.
The centerpiece of the conference will be breakout sessions in which researchers from different fields can collaborate and develop research plans to address new questions in synthetic biology.
The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative will pay all travel expenses, including lodging and meals, for invited attendees. To encourage further interdisciplinary research in this area, the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative will award seed grants on a competitive basis to researchers who attend the conference. The call for proposals will be announced at the November conference - about $1 million in grants will be awarded in April 2010.
Eligibility
Approximately 100 individuals in the United States are invited to attend the conference, with representation from science, engineering, medicine, and social science disciplines, as well as the science media, funding organizations, non-profits, etc. The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative will pay all travel expenses, including lodging and meals, for invited attendees, who are expected to attend the entire conference. As part of the ongoing effort to evaluate and improve the Initiative, attendees will be asked to complete short surveys from time to time.
2008 Communication Awards Winners and Finalists Announced BOOK WINNER Walter Isaacson for Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon & Schuster), a comprehensive and scholarly ambitious look at the life and mind of the pre-eminent scientific figure of the 20th century. NEWSPAPER/MAGAZINE WINNER Bob Marshall, Mark Schleifstein, Dan Swenson, and Ted Jackson for Last Chance: The Fight to Save a Disappearing Coast (The Times-Picayune, New Orleans), an outstanding newspaper series that combines superb storytelling with the latest science in its call to action to save Louisiana's wetlands. TV/RADIO/FILM WINNER George Butler (director), White Mountain Films, Kennedy-Marshall Films and Walt Disney Company for Roving Mars, a spectacular film that chronicles the science and engineering behind the Mars rovers and follows their breathtaking search for water on the red planet. Roving Mars is made with the cooperation of The Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA. It is presented as a public service by Lockheed Martin. TV/RADIO/FILM FINALIST Joseph McMaster (writer, producer and director), Gary Johnstone (producer, director), Richard Hutton (executive producer), and Paula Apsell (senior executive producer) for WGBH/NOVA and Vulcan Productions' "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial." ONLINE/INTERNET WINNER Alan Boyle, MSNBC.com science editor, for selected works from Cosmic Log and his pioneering efforts to bring daily coverage of the physical sciences, technological innovation and space sciences to broad new audiences on a popular news web site. ONLINE/INTERNET FINALIST Vikki Valentine, Alison Richards, and David Malakoff for National Public Radio's Climate Connections (www.npr.org/climateconnections).
