Engineering Research Centers Stakeholder Workshops

美国国家科学基金会（NSF）建立了工程研究中心（ERC）计划，以推进合作，跨学科和创新的工程研究和教育。ERC计划汇集了学术界，工业界和政府的合作伙伴关系，共同进行研究，这将导致变革性的工程系统，解决和创造解决方案，以21世纪的社会需求。NSF越来越多地致力于支持ERC不仅考虑潜在用户和潜在买家的需求和观点（这在翻译和商业化过程中是标准的），而且还考虑可能受到新创新影响的其他利益相关者的观点。从研究的开始到整个创新过程中，不断地将研究的价值框定在一个全面的知识产权持有者社区中，将有助于研究人员更丰富地想象其后果。为了支持这一目标，VentureWell提议与ERC领导人一起组织和促进两个为期半天的研讨会，一个是2022年春季/夏季的虚拟活动，然后是2022年9月的面对面聚会。这些研讨会的目的是探讨是否需要一个利益相关者工作组，如果需要的话，为工作组定义一个章程。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The National Science Foundation (NSF) established the Engineering Research Centers (ERC) program to advance collaborative, interdisciplinary, and innovative engineering research and education. The ERC program brings together academia, industry, and government in a partnership to jointly conduct research that will lead to transformative engineering systems that address and create solutions to 21st-centurysocietal needs. Increasingly, NSF aims to support ERCs in considering not only the needs and perspectives of potential users and potential buyers—as is standard in the translation and commercialization process—but the perspectives of other stakeholders potentially affected by new innovations as well. Continuous framing of the value of the research to a comprehensive stakeholdercommunity from its initiation and throughout the innovation process will help researchers more richly imagine its consequences. In support of this aim, VentureWell proposes to organize and facilitate two half-day workshops with ERC leaders, a virtual event in the Spring/Summer of 2022 followed by an in-person gathering in September 2022. The purpose of these workshops is to explore whether a Stakeholder Working Group is needed and if so, to define a charter for the working group.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.