2020 NSF CISE-SBE Workshop on Harnessing the Computational and Social Sciences to Solve Critical Societal Problems

1. The program committee prepared a report entitled NSF-CISE-SBE Virtual Roundtable: Harnessing the Computational and Social Sciences to Solve Critical Societal Problems: Report to the CISE-SBE Advisory Committee that has limited distribution to the CISE and SBE PDs and to the CISE-SBE Advisory Board. The report was presented to the CISE-SBE Advisory Committee in December 2020.  The members of the program committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance

2. Additionally, this workshop’s steering committee recommended identifying a small steering committee to recruit leadership to plan and organize future activities such as needed workshops, roundtables, and solicitations along the following lines:

• Design of long-term research centers. Taking seriously the recommendation to stimulate breakthrough research on socio-technical systems by funding a series of long-term research centers, how should such centers be designed? What models are available, from NSF and other agencies, and how would these models translate to the context of socio-technical systems? Which substantive themes offer the most promise for transformative progress over the next ten years under a research center model? Which constituencies would have to be included in order to make such centers successful? How would they be funded?
• Negotiating partnerships between academia and industry. Arguably the least successful element of the June roundtable was getting participation from the relevant industry partners. In order to even have a discussion about industry needs and concerns, and how they might benefit by partnering with the academic research community, it is necessary to get the relevant people “in the room.” Yet while NSF does have close relations with industry in other areas, engagement with major tech or media companies on issues of societal relevance around human-centric data and platforms has proven elusive. Some combination of novel thinking and critical mass of the scientific community would seem to be in order, but precisely how to do this remains unclear.
• Big ideas for research infrastructure. In parallel with industry partnerships, more concrete discussions about particular ideas for shared research infrastructure could yield dividends. For example, it was proposed during the roundtable that a large scale (n100,000) national mobile panel would transform the study both of (mis)information consumption as well as socio-economic disparities. But how would such a panel be designed? How much would it cost? Who would benefit? Would the potential insights be sufficiently transformative from a policy standpoint as to justify the costs? Even a single example such as this would require considerable discussion and analysis, but other examples could also be proposed. How should the community prioritize?
• Reconfiguring graduate training at the intersection of computational and social sciences. While many topics require outside input or support, reconfiguring PhD programs to meet the challenges of research at the intersection of computational and social sciences is something that could conceivably begin today. Yet history demonstrates that efforts to stimulate interdisciplinary training are fraught with challenges. What examples of success do we have to build upon? How can these be scaled up? Or do we need new models altogether?

3. As reported earlier, this meeting was originally conceived as a face-to-face workshop scheduled for early May, 2020. As the pandemic unfolded in the US, planning rapidly pivoted to a virtual event. While unanticipated benefits included a diverse and accomplished set of attendees, notable disadvantages included reduced cross-cutting discussions originally planned as breakout groups. Also the economic uncertainty accompanying the pandemic in the spring reduced industry participation, for example in desired sectors such as healthcare and journalism. Nevertheless, the high quality of the invited presentations spurred robust discussion through Q&A sessions moderated by session facilitators alongside active text-based chat across multiple channels.

4. Several speakers spoke on the crosscutting issues --and consequently many of our recommendations to the NSF--concerned these cross-cutting issues rather than the specific domains around which the discussions were oriented. We therefore suspect that many of these same themes and recommendations would have emerged even with a different set of problem areas and different panelists. We note, finally, that many of the same issues have been raised by a subsequent publication in Science [1] on the recent history and possible future of computational social science.

5. Roundtable participants expressed both optimism and pessimism for creating a more productive and impactful research ecosystem that brings together the socio-technical expertise represented by the SBE and CISE directorates.

6.The workshop brought together 71 participants, which was significantly more than the 25-30 limited to an in-person meeting along the following line:

• Academia – [47, including 3 HBCUs]
• Industry – [7, including Intel (3), Facebook (1), IBM Research (1), VMware (1)]
• Research Organizations – [2 (Pew Research Center, SSRC]
• Government – [16, including 8 from NSF CISE and 8 from NSF SBE]

* What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?

As pointed out in the December 2020 report, the workshop participants agreed that the ability to address the challenge of reconfiguring graduate training (PhD programs) to meet the challenges of research at the intersection of computational and social sciences is something that could conceivably begin today. This is an area where work could commence under the direction of the small steering committee that was recommended by participants to recruit leadership to plan and organize future activities. 

* Have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? If so, please provide details.

The results of the report have been disseminated to the CISE and SBE Program Directors and CISE-SBE Advisory Committee and discussed at the advisory Committee meeting in December 2020. 

This report is uploaded as an artifact attachment to this annual report. It is also uploaded to the private program committee website hosted by VU at https://cps-vo.org/group/CISE-SBE-VR20_PC-Group under the "Report Versions" tab. To access this private website, one will have to log on to the CPS VO with one's username and password. Passwords will have to be reset as we do not keep passwords. To reset one's password and to request one's username, please either log onto the CPS VO website at www.cps-vo.org and click on the “Forgot username or password?” link at the top middle of the page and go from there or click on the following link: https://cps-vo.org/user/password?destination=group/CISE-SBE-VR20_PC-Group/registration to request your username and to reset your password. 

Following are additional statistics collected and posted to the public meeting website at https://cps-vo.org/group/CISE-SBE-VR20:

• Fifteen (15) white papers collected
• Fourteen (14) slide decks from presenters
• List of the 72 registrants and 72 attendees who participated in the roundtable identified by name and institution

* What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?

1. The December 2020 report to the CISE-SBE Advisory Committee called for the establishment of a NSF SBE Data subcommittee that is planning its first meeting in mid-March 2021 and a CISE subcommittee that will coordinate its own plan. These subcommittees will continue to meet, gather information, and expand on the recommendations made in the December 2020 report.

2. The full CISE-SBE committee plans to work on making revisions to the December 2020 report to prepare a final report that will provide its findings and recommendations that could be published in the arXiv for public dissemination and access.

3. The new subcommittees and/or full committee along with NSF will identify future workshop topics to include research that span CISE and SBE.