Woodley Park Institute founder and president Dr. Kristine Willis has been selected by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) as a Civic Science Fellow to explore how scientific communities identify, support, and advance ideas with the potential to transform the physical sciences.
The 18-month fellowship, supported by the John Templeton Foundation and the Civic Science Fellows program, will bring Willis together with AIP’s research team and a broad community of scientists, scientific societies, funders, entrepreneurs, historians, policymakers, and other stakeholders. The project will examine how promising opportunities for discovery are recognized—and how organizations can make better decisions about supporting transformative research in a world of finite resources.
Understanding How Breakthroughs Take Shape
Scientific breakthroughs are often easiest to recognize in hindsight. Long before their importance becomes clear, however, scientists, research institutions, funding agencies, and other organizations must continually decide which ideas and investigators to support.
Through the fellowship, Willis will investigate how those decisions are made across the physical sciences, including the signals scientists use to recognize promising new directions, the conditions that allow transformative ideas to develop, and the role that scientific societies and other institutions play in shaping pathways to discovery.
The work will combine insights from stakeholders across the scientific enterprise with quantitative and historical approaches to understanding scientific progress.
“Scientists and funders make consequential judgments about promising research every day, often with incomplete information,” Willis said. “I’m excited to work with AIP and the Civic Science Fellows community to better understand how those judgments are made, what we can learn from them, and how evidence can help organizations recognize and support emerging opportunities for discovery.”
Advancing WPI’s Mission
The fellowship closely aligns with the core research mission of the Woodley Park Institute: to develop a detailed, quantitative understanding of the factors that drive the success or failure of scientific ideas and investments.
WPI’s ongoing work examines how scientific progress occurs, how funding systems shape discovery, and how quantitative evidence can help identify emerging areas of research with unusual potential. The AIP fellowship will complement this work by providing an opportunity to study how scientists and institutions in the physical sciences recognize transformative opportunities and translate those judgments into decisions about where to invest resources.
Willis will continue to lead and develop WPI in parallel with her appointment as a Civic Science Fellow.
“Ultimately, these efforts are directed toward the same goal,” Willis said. “The better we understand how scientific progress happens, the better positioned we are to design funding systems that help good ideas flourish and direct resources toward research with the greatest potential to advance science and benefit society.”
Learn more about the Civic Science Fellows program:
Civic Science Fellowship