Advancing Convergence Research at the National Center for Atmospheric Science through Investment in Early Career Innovators

Convergence research integrates knowledge, methods, and expertise from different disciplines and forms novel frameworks to catalyze scientific discovery and innovation. The National Science Foundation (NSF) characterizes convergence research as driven by a specific and compelling problem and by deep integration across disciplines.

In a new program, the NSF's National Center for Atmospheric Research supports early career faculty in the social sciences and STEM to co-develop interdisciplinary research projects with NCAR researchers. One of the objectives of the Early Career Faculty Innovator Program is to accelerate innovation and discovery in Earth system science and improve the creation and delivery of scientific information that is responsive to societal needs. The Innovator Program builds on a rich tradition of interdisciplinary science and social science research at NCAR and expands its partnership with the university community to form a new community of practice. In 2019, the first cohort of six social scientists and three physical scientists along with their graduate students spent their first of two summer sabbaticals at NCAR. The program funds research for the faculty with two years of year-long support for a graduate student. The programmatic theme of the 2019-2020 cohort is Coastal Regions and Human Settlements, aiming to address impacts of environmental variability and climate change as well as natural hazards on human settlements in U.S. coastal regions. An external evaluation will assess whether sustained convergence research collaborations evolve from the program. For the formal evaluation, we follow early career researchers and their graduate students, NCAR researchers and staff, and a select group of external advisors to NCAR. Evaluation data include a text-analysis of interviews and an initial survey to capture how social networks among researchers are developing.

This presentation will share the design and conceptual framework of the program, an overview of the research undertaken by the cohort, as well as early results of the external evaluation. We will share first findings on opportunities and challenges of supporting complex science programs and creating a community of convergence researchers.