Shanthi Chandrasekar, Kolam – Aishwarya (Earth), 2018, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

Search Results

200 Results Found for

May 19, 2026

You Have 9,870 Unread Messages

Rebecca Coyne, Jason Lloyd

Spam—in the form of emails, text messages, junk search results, and now AI-generated content—is a constant, annoying part of online life. But does it have to be this way?
Spring 2026

Spam Policy and the Myth of the Ungovernable Internet

Rebecca Coyne

The story of feckless efforts to address spam in the early 2000s offers a cautionary tale for attempts to regulate artificial intelligence today.
Winter 2020

How Academic Science Gave Its Soul to the Publishing Industry

Mark W. Neff

STEF at 75 America’s globally preeminent university research enterprise is constructed on two bedrock principles of self-governance. The first is autonomy: academic scientists should be left free to determine their own research… Read More
Fall 2024

Will It Scale?

Omar Al-Ubaydli, John A. List

During the bloodiest battles of the First World War, a young French sergeant named André Maginot was injured in the fighting, earning him a medal for valor. He later rose to the… Read More
Spring 2026

What Do We Want From AI?

John P. Nelson

Public values must shape governance and implementation of artificial intelligence.
May 5, 2026

Kumar Garg Funds Ideas That Are “Big, if True”

Kumar Garg, Monya Baker

Kumar Garg, president of Renaissance Philanthropy, shares how he has spent his career finding, funding, and implementing ideas both within the government and outside it via philanthropy, which is uniquely positioned to pilot “big, if true” ideas.
June 18, 2024

Brent Blevins Makes Mars Policy in Congress

Brent Blevins, Lisa Margonelli

In this installment of Science Policy IRL, Lisa Margonelli goes behind the scenes of congressional policymaking with Brent Blevins. Blevins is a senior congressional staffer and staff director of the… Read More
Winter 2025

How Some Universities Translate Inclusive Innovation Into Regional Growth

Mercedes Delgado, Fiona Murray

Positioning universities as hubs of inclusive innovation, particularly in less inventive places, can shift local workforce demographics and accelerate growth.
Spring 2026

We Created a Survey to Measure Community Well-Being and Activated a “Messy Middle”

Natalie Bomstad

How a Wisconsin county realized that systems change requires shared sensemaking as much as innovative metrics.
Spring 2025

How Dual Use Puts Research Under the Microscope

Håvard Rustad Markussen

A recent case in Norway demonstrates how dual-use controls can constrict international scientific collaboration without offering commensurate protections.
Spring 2025

Retooling the Definition of the Skilled Technical Workforce

Guy Leonel Siwe, Vicki Lancaster, Sarah McDonald, Cesar Montalvo

Why don’t job classification systems recognize what skills today’s occupations really require?
Winter 2025

The Importance of Infrastructure for Scalable Policy Solutions

In “Will It Scale?” (Issues, Fall 2024), Omar Al-Ubaydli and John A. List rightly underscore the complex nature of scaling successful programs. In light of this thoughtful work, I would… Read More
Spring 2025

Let Unfunded Grant Applications See the Light of Day

Stuart Buck, Christopher Steven Marcum

Showing which proposals do and don’t receive federal funding can improve research and advance open science.
June 24, 2024

Preparing Researchers for an Era of Freer Information

Peter W. B. Phillips

If you Google my name along with “Monsanto,” you will find a series of allegations from 2013 that my scholarly work at the University of Saskatchewan, focused on technological change in the… Read More
November 18, 2021

The Ongoing Transformation

For the Issues podcast, we talk with fascinating people to get a behind-the-scenes look at how their research and ideas are transforming our world. Listen and subscribe to The Ongoing Transformation wherever … Read More
December 9, 2025

Bhavya Lal Charts a Future for Humans in Space

Bhavya Lal, Lisa Margonelli

Bhavya Lal, a leader in space policy, shares the unexpected trajectory of her career. She discusses how policy and governance became her passion, how she went from writing reports to leading programs at NASA, and the big questions that drive her work.
Fall 2025

A Brief Note From the Guy on the Table

Robert Cook-Deegan

A traumatic brain injury gave Robert Cook-Deegan a crash course in a medical research system tangled in technological dilemma and political paradox, a dysfunctional insurance bureaucracy, and the healing powers of superglue.
November 25, 2025

Making AI Chatbots Safer

J. B. Branch, Megan Nicholson

AI chatbots generate conversations with users and can appear, at times, quite human. J. B. Branch discusses who is using chatbots, what the companies behind these AIs are doing, and how they might be regulated.
Fall 2025

Don’t Forget the Farmers

Will farmers see a benefit from modernized soil tests that provide more accurate assessments of soil quality—and therefore land value?
Spring 2026

How the American Research University Survives

Robert A. Brown, Bruce R. Guile

University leadership needs to shift attention from chasing prestige to crafting strategies for long-term success.
Fall 2025

Build Confidence in Science by Embracing Uncertainty Rather Than Chasing Reproducibility

Anne L. Plant

Despite calls to fund reproducibility studies, resources would be better spent on developing tools that enable efficient collection and sharing of experimental protocol details and metadata to enable study comparisons.
June 3, 2025

How ADHD Affects Adults

David Goodman, Sara Frueh

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is the second most prevalent psychiatric disorder in adults. David Goodman explains how ADHD affects adults, the complexities in how it’s diagnosed and treated, and open questions for research in the field.
Winter 2026

Repurposing Grand Challenges in Tumultuous Times

Martin Ho, Pramod P. Khargonekar, Eoin O’Sullivan

As research budgets tighten, priorities evolve, and new funding models emerge, the grand challenge framework can restore coherence, direction, and shared purpose across the scientific enterprise.
October 10, 2025

Institutional Subscriptions

Institutions can now purchase unlimited digital access to four decades of the best writing on public policy related to science and technology. Why Subscribe to Issues in Science and Technology? Issues… Read More
March 3, 2026

Building a Tech Innovation Ecosystem in Newark

Fay Cobb Payton, Lyneir Richardson, Lisa Margonelli

Newark, New Jersey is working to build a new, inclusive tech innovation ecosystem. Fay Cobb Payton and Lyneir Richardson share how Newark is pioneering data-led innovation with a diverse group of entrepreneurs.
September 30, 2025

Not Now, But Soon: The Food System is Rigged

Thin Lei Win, Malka Older

Investigative journalist Thin Lei Win shares her experience growing up in Myanmar, and how that has shaped how she sees the intersection between food production, climate, and disasters.
Winter 2026

Why the Cloud Needs Competition

Asad Ramzanali

To ensure the nation’s leadership in artificial intelligence, cloud computing infrastructure must be regulated to encourage competition and enable innovation, building on lessons from other sectors.
Winter 2026

Simplify Research Regulations

Alan I. Leshner, Alex M. Helman

The current policy environment offers a unique opportunity to act swiftly on the longstanding issue of burdensome research regulations.
Winter 2026

How I Learned to Conduct Research That Makes a Difference in the Lives of Arizona’s Kids

Gabriel Q. Shaibi

Gabriel Shaibi was trained to gather evidence about diabetes prevention. To have an impact, he learned to gather partners.
Winter 2026

Butter Cows and Seed Art and Participatory Spectacles

Colleen Sheehy

State fairs create an intersection for rural and urban life, connecting fairgoers with agrarian knowledge and heritage, even though fewer than 2% of Americans are farmers today.