Science and technology have been in the news a lot in the last couple of years, with first-ever photos of black holes, expanding concern over climate change, private-label rocket ships lifting off, and an era-defining global pandemic. These events have all contributed to an influx of philanthropists and organizations new to science and tech funding, says Evan S. Michelson, a science program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Just how best to fund science and technology research has been a question of interest not just for foundation program directors, but also by academics who dig into matters of policy and social impact. Michelson, a science grantmaker who holds a stack of degrees himself, discusses the theory and practice of science funding in a new book, “Philanthropy and the Future of Science and Technology.”
With private funding’s growing influence on research, says Michelson, it’s both helpful and important that program directors have a solid grasp of academic theories on policy and society as they strive to shape their overall strategy and make individual funding decisions.
“I wrote this book in large part to bring together the two communities—the academics and the practitioners,” said Michelson. “In the academic community there are lot of ongoing discussions in the social sciences and science policy about research funding and how to do it with an eye towards having societal impact,” he said. “And the other is the people that do science philanthropy, to give them an introduction to some of the academic theories they may not be aware of, which I think could help them put a framework around the work they do.”
Michelson has extensive experience in both communities. He oversees Sloan’s Energy and Environment program, which focuses on decarbonization, and manages grantmaking for Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an international astrophysics research collaboration. Prior to Sloan, he spent about five years at the Rockefeller Foundation. But he has spent plenty of time on campus, holding a Ph.D. from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU, an M.A. in international science and technology policy from George Washington University, yet another M.A. in philosophical foundations of physics from Columbia University, and a B.A. in philosophy of science from Brown University.
Whether addressing emergencies like COVID-19 or climate change, other pressing needs in health, or the simple desire to contribute to human knowledge and invention, funding in the arcane world of academic science and technology research can be a daunting task for program directors. Nevertheless, young funders such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Open Philanthropy Project have become major players in science funding. In 2013, six science foundations, including the Sloan Foundation, established the Science Philanthropy Alliance as a way to bring in more private funding for research and offer guidance to newcomers. In addition to the core decision about which disciplines and projects to focus on, grantmakers must also grapple with big picture questions about how to be responsible actors within the scientific community.
“Within the context of the contemporary science and technology enterprise, the role of philanthropy has become even more multifaceted and complex as the resources needed to undertake large-scale research projects multiply, as institutional priorities change, and as new organizations form,” Michelson wrote.
Intrinsic to the problem of science funding is hashing out the nuances between what’s good for science and what’s good for society. These are the sort of questions addressed by the principles referred to as responsible research and innovation (RRI), a framework of ideas developed to help guide research with respect to societal implications. In the U.S., the philanthropic world hasn’t really been in the RRI conversation, but the concept has a lot to offer for funders thinking about the big picture of their organizational giving. “But it’s hard to take a theory like RRI and put into practice,” said Michelson. “Part of what I wanted to do with the book is show different ways to put theories into practice, narrowly or expansively.”
Recent challenges—scientific and social—such as the need to bring in more diverse voices, has made it clear to funders that the needs of research, even basic research, must be considered in tandem with societal impact.
“Keeping those social dimensions in mind early on may lead to adjustments in the research that can have benefits and payoffs over the long term,” said Michelson. “It’s not that you want to give up on basic research, and not that you want societal considerations to dwarf everything else, but the interplay is important.”
Michelson’s book devotes considerable space to case studies and examples from philanthropic approaches and funding in science and research. These case studies and discussions of the different approaches of science-focused foundations are at least as potentially instructive to program directors—anyone who has ever worked at any kind of job knows that you can learn a lot, fast, from peers who have been there before.
Michelson’s hope for the book is that it will help funders put academic theories to work on the ground as they shape their giving strategies and day-to-day funding decisions. “I wrote the book I wanted to read as a program director,” he said.
Michelson previously wrote about science and research policy in a 2016 book, “Assessing the Societal Implications of Emerging Technologies: Anticipatory governance in practice.” Find “Philanthropy and the Future of Science and Technology” at the publisher’s website or a large online bookseller.
