About

This is an agenda-setting conference that aims at facilitating the generation and execution of a new Roadmap for the Science of Science Policy community and a strategic plan for National Science Foundation’s Science of Science and Innovation Policy program.

The conference will review opportunities and challenges associated with the usage of mathematical, statistical, and computational models in science, technology, and innovation (STI) decision making. Among others, STI models can be employed to simulate the diffusion of ideas and experts, the impact of population explosion and aging, alternative funding schemas, changes in world dominance, or the probable outcomes of different STI policy decisions.

Advances in computational power combined with the availability of STI data (e.g., publications, patents, funding, clinical trials, stock market, social media data) create ideal conditions for the advancement of computational modeling approaches that can be empirically validated and used to understand and predict future developments. Global operation rooms that provide visualizations of current data and predictions of possible futures are commonplace in meteorology, finance, epidemiology, or defense. Computer games such as SimCity let players design and experience alternative futures. However, much STI decision making does not yet benefit from the power of big data or from computational models.

This conference will bring together leading experts from economics, social science, scientometrics and bibliometrics, information science, physics, and science policy that develop mathematical, statistical, and computational models of different types (stochastic, agent-based, epidemics, game-theoretic, network. etc.). The conference participants will brainstorm how to best design a STI modelling framework that organizes existing models using a systems-science approach; they will also discuss the interlinkage of existing datasets and model repositories. Professional training is required for the proper use of the models. Thus, educators, game developers, and science communicators will be invited to help mastermind effective engagement and ongoing capacity-building for STI policy makers. Most importantly, the conference is poised to address the current and future needs of policy makers and hence major model users, such as representatives from funding agencies, university administrators and other science policy makers. Policy makers will take a major role in helping the modeling community to identify grand challenges and to develop a roadmap for future research and development.

The conference is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SBE-1546824 and the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at Indiana University. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.