For your consideration, please see the note below. This is a chance to help shape the future direction of social science investments at the National Science Foundation.
Kind regards.
Jacqueline R. Meszaros, Ph.D.
Program Director
Innovation and Organizational Sciences
Decision, Risk and Management Sciences
National Science Foundation
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Dear Colleagues,
Yesterday we made the next step on our efforts to ask for the scientific community's advice in shaping our priorities for the future. The letter opens with this observation:
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the social, behavioral, and economic sciences face extraordinary opportunities to address next-generation research challenges. The landscape is vast and complex, stretching across temporal and spatial dimensions and multiple levels of analysis -- from studying the human brain to implications of decision making in a dynamic and fragmented yet interconnected world. As we look forward 10 or even 20 years, the Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation (NSF/SBE) seeks to frame innovative research for the year 2020 and beyond that enhances fundamental knowledge and benefits society in many ways.
This request is part of a process that will help NSF/SBE make plans to support future research. Other activities will include a report by the Directorate's Advisory Committee about the grand challenges facing the SBE sciences over the next decade and recommendations from the Directorate's staff. The insights resulting from this process are threefold: They will inform the substance of future research, the capacities to pursue that research, and the infrastructure to enable investigations that will be increasingly interdisciplinary and international and will involve multiple perspectives and intellectual frameworks, differing scales and contexts, and diverse approaches and methodologies.
I am writing to request your help in disseminating our request for advice to the largest audience possible. Could you send this out to whatever individuals or groups you think would be useful to ask for contributions? Because the deadline is short (September 30, 2010), we are especially eager for your assistance.
The DCL can be found at this URL:
http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf10069
Individuals and groups who wish to suggest ideas to SBE should do so at this web site, following the instructions there:
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/
Thank you for your help in getting the word out. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have questions.
Best regards,
Myron
Myron P. Gutmann
Assistant Director, Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
National Science Foundation
e-mail: mgutmann@nsf.gov
Phone: 703-292-8700