NSF Awards: 2048419
America’s economic competitiveness is tied directly to the pace of scientific and technological discovery, which requires sustained, long-term support as well as agility. To help the U.S. stay at the forefront of research and innovation — and maintain its leadership in the global economy — the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Engineering launched the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA), the first engineering research visioning organization of its kind.
ERVA enables impact on national research priorities by convening diverse minds and voices from across the nation to identify emerging trends and solutions. As a neutral, inclusive partnership, ERVA breeds connectivity that drives timely translation of identified needs into research objectives, directly supporting the nation’s security and its ability to compete in a rapidly changing international economy.
Engineering research profoundly impacts our daily lives. ERVA brings the engineering community together to envision high-impact solutions to society’s grand challenges and to spark new research directions for a more secure and sustainable world. Our structure promotes connectivity among government, academic, industry, community, professional society and public sector stakeholders, empowering the engineering research community to speak with a unified voice.
Addressing today’s critical scientific and societal challenges requires increasingly collaborative, cross-disciplinary and convergent approaches through new modes of engagement to ensure broad participation across the entire engineering ecosystem. Help us define the future of engineering research!
Brooke Coley
It was great to learn about ERVA engine. I would be more interested to know about your projects, Also, I would like to know how do you integrate equity and innovation when building the next generation of engineers? Thank you so much!
Iris Wagstaff
Jennifer Carinci
Executive Director
Thanks for your comments and your important work, Brooke! I'd love to do a call with you to learn more about your project and brainstorm ways ERVA may be able to involve your graduate students (email: jennifer@uidp.net).
Diverse participation — including different backgrounds, voices and ideas — is vital to identify emerging trends and efficient solutions that benefit society. Thus, ERVA is taking an intentional approach to involving voices across the engineering community. Examples include involving core partners (UIDP, BTAA, and the EPSCoR/IDeA Foundation) whose membership spans across all U.S. states, including those that receive little federal R&D funding; an Advisory Board that is comprised of 50% women; visioning event participants who span career stages, races/ethnicities, and engineering and other disciplines; cross-sector Thematic Task Forces; and diverse Affiliate Partners, including those with an emphasis (such as AISES, IEC, SHPE, and WEPAN) on broadening participation. We welcome conversations with further groups and individuals who can enhance and extend these efforts and advance our collective mission.
Allison Gonzalez
Iris Wagstaff
Scott Pattison
Research Scientist
Thanks for sharing your work, Jennifer. I'm curious to hear more about what you have learned related to partnerships and network--not just the successes but also challenges and the ongoing sticking points for the field. Thank you!
Iris Wagstaff
Sandy Mau
Communications Director
Scott, great question. With a mission to enable the voices of engineering across all the many disciplines within it, we have really focused on growing out network of networks in our first year so we can deliver on identifying bold, new visions for engineering research. Going from zero to 100 has taught us first to focus on the inherent value of what we're doing when we connect with our network. Our volunteer leaders (96 in our first year across 5 standing and 2 ad hoc groups) are remarkably generous with their time because they believe this will have long-term impact on them, their work, their families, and our world. We are incredibly privileged to work with such thoughtful, engaged experts. Second, we remain vigilantly aware of how valuable their time is, so behind the scenes, we work hard to make it easy for them to engage and do what they do best.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is not knowing what we don't know. Every one of our partner organizations has its own constituencies, subgroups, and topical events, and it's not possible to take advantage of every opportunity to provide the right information at just the right time to put ERVA on their agenda.
We are tasked with identifying the future research directions where engineering can lead. But you never really know where the next great idea will come from. That's why we're looking for anyone interested in the future of engineering (whether they're engineers or not) to follow our work and get involved. The problems we're trying to address are complex and their solutions will require us to engage individuals across disciplines, career stage, sectors, geographies, and diverse backgrounds. We need a broad range of perspectives to do this work right.
Allison Gonzalez
Scott Pattison
Research Scientist
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing the additional informational, Sandy. I appreciate the focus on inherent value. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks again!
Nidaa Makki
Professor
Thank you for sharing this important initiative! I liked how you outlined the structure of ERVA in a clear visual that showed the various stakeholders and the focus of the work. It seemed that you have assembled a wide network of people. Is there a specific partnership or collaboration framework that was used to inform how the network was formed?
I also have a question that's somewhat related to the question that Scott posed on challenges. What metrics are you using to assess success of the alliance?
Iris Wagstaff
Edl Schamiloglu
Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, ERVA Co-Principal Investigator
Thanks Nidaa. I am one of the ERVA Co-PIs. The collaboration framework resulted from nearly daily meetings of the PI/Co-PI team, as well as a dozen or so supporters during the proposal writing phase, March - July 2020. It is through these sessions that we came up with what we refer to as the "ERVA Engine."
As part of our team ERVA is subcontracting CREP (Center for Research in Educational Policy) at the University of Memphis to be the independent assessor of ERVA's activities - https://www.memphis.edu/crep/. There are short term assessments being performed (such as following each of our visioning events), as well as mid-term and long-term assessments. The ultimate long-term assessments will be largely based on ERVA's products, which will be our reports that will be published following each visioning event (within 3-6 months). The impact of these reports (tracking trends in Federal investment in Engineering Research, as an example) will be the ultimate metric to assess success.
Thank you again for your question! Edl
Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska
Lowber B. Strange Endowed Chair in Engineering Vice President for Knowledge Enterprise, ERVA Principal Investigator
We invite you to join us in our mission to identify and develop bold and transformative new engineering research directions and to catalyze the engineering community's pursuit of innovative, high-impact research that benefits society. Stay tuned for reports from and browse the archives of our first two visioning events.
Amy Wilson-Lopez
Associate Professor
Thank you for sharing! I love the idea of building stronger connections among stakeholders who often stay siloed--for example, industries who might not have built strong connections with community members. I appreciated Nidaa's question about metrics due to the ambitious nature of your network--for example, I wondered how you would know whether the alliance "sparked next generation ideas"? Perhaps through new patents or were you looking at something else? I also wondered what lessons you have learned through engaging and connecting different stakeholders. In my experience, it is very different to engage industry versus to engage the public, for example. Have you developed different strategies or approaches for engaging different groups? Thanks again for sharing about this alliance and I look forward to seeing what comes of it.
Charles Johnson-Bey
Senior Vice President, ERVA Co-Principal Investigator
Hi Amy, thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts and questions. I am a Co-PI of ERVA and have worked in both academia and industry. Our strategy to get industry more involved is to host listening sessions with industry, identify key leaders who are actively working with universities, national labs, and others in the Science & Technology community. According to the 2022 State of US Science and Engineering Report by NSF, most growth in US R&D performance and funding is attributable to the business sector. Fortunately many of us have worked together for years and understand the importance of R&D for the United States.
Iris Wagstaff
It was great to learn more about ERVA. This definitely looks like an innovative and unique alliance that brings together stakeholders from across industries and sectors. The potential for impact of engineering research to address some critical national and global challenges is great and I am looking forward to hearing about the impact that this alliance will have on supporting the next generation of engineers and researchers.
Jennifer Carinci
Executive Director
Thanks so much, Iris. We are excited for the possibilities of nascent opportunities identified via ERVA's engineering research community crowdsourcing to benefit society. Involvement across stakeholders is critical, and we would love for ERN participants to join us in impacting national research priorities!
Allison Gonzalez
Thank you for your informative video and for your important work! It is no doubt that that engineering holds the solutions to present and future challenges. These interdisciplinary, cross-sector opportunties for collaboration are vital for innovation.
Jennifer Carinci
Executive Director
Back at you, Allison!
ERVA invites responses to the following question to be emailed to info@ervacommunity.org, as our search for visioning event themes to prioritize where engineering can lead is ongoing.
Edl Schamiloglu
Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, ERVA Co-Principal Investigator
Great video - super informative!
Chris Atchison
This is excellent. Would love to know more about the focus on broadening access across the network. How are you purposely integrating diverse worldviews and voices into this work?
Jennifer Carinci
Executive Director
Thanks for visiting, Chris. In addition to what I shared with Brooke above, we employ open calls for participants in our visioning events and positions in our volunteer leadership. These are distributed via the network of networks approach Sandy mentioned and participants and volunteers are carefully curated to involve diverse voices. We are always looking to intentionally enhance our approaches. I would love the opportunity to reconnect and welcome suggestions based on your accessibility expertise. Please contact me at jennifer@uidp.net.
Samantha Quizon
Thanks for watching our video!
We’re always welcoming ERVA Champions into the fold – join us to learn about opportunities to partner, volunteer, and participate in future events. The link is here: https://bit.ly/3LlgoFR.
If you have questions or suggestions, send us an email at info@ervacommunity.org. We look forward to hearing from you!