Maximizing Investigator's Research Award: Diversifying the Scientific Workforce

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This is an application for a Maximizing Investigator's Research Award (MIRA) submitted by Professor Mary (Molly) Carnes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Carnes' research program focuses on diversifying the scientific workforce. She has consistently taken a systems approach, conducting action research with multi-tiered interventions at the individual and institutional level. With funding from NIGMS since 2009, her research has focused on the myriad ways cultural stereotypes impede the entry, persistence, and advancement of all women and underrepresented racial/ethnic minority men and women in academic medicine, science, and engineering. Often outside of conscious awareness, stereotypes can shape the decisions of those in the scientific workforce who determine who to fund, mentor, admit or hire and also influence potential scientists-to-be, who need to determine whether a career in science is right for them and whether they “fit” in the scientific workforce. Hallmarks of Dr. Carnes' research have been deploying methods appropriate to the research question (experimental, quasi-experimental, and qualitative), engaging researchers from multiple other disciplines (e.g., sociology, psychology, education, systems engineering, linguistics, public health, computer science), developing and testing theoretically-informed interventions, translating evidence-based strategies into practice, and studying the impact of implementation. Approaching unconscious (“implicit”) stereotype-based bias as a habit, Dr. Carnes' team developed and experimentally verified the first effective intervention to help faculty break the gender bias habit (with subsequent improvement in department climate and greater diversity in hiring), created an interactive video game that addresses implicit race bias in graduate school, performed the first text analysis of R01 critiques and found paradoxically worse scores with greater verbal acclamation for women's vs. men's R01 renewals, and constructed and videorecorded authentic NIH study sections to analyze verbal and non-verbal discourse among reviewers to identify patterns that may be consequential to the outcome of an R01 peer review. MIRA would continue the momentum of Dr. Carnes' research program by providing the opportunity to broaden the habit-breaking workshop intervention to include race and other group bias and test its effectiveness beyond a single site, and continue to use text mining to probe for implicit gender and race bias in gatekeeping evaluations (e.g, reviews of manuscripts and K awards). MIRA would also capitalize on the datasets compiled through Dr. Carnes' research program which include 5 waves of the Study of Faculty Worklife at UW-Madison with retained identifiers, >5,000 R01 Summary Statements from investigators' awarded in 2010-2014, 15 hours of videorecording of expert scientists discussing R01 proposals in simulated study sections, and transcribed interviews with >40 experienced NIH reviewers.