PAST EVENTS & CONFERENCES

Leveraging, Enhancing, and Developing Biology (LED-BIO): Scientific Societies Shedding Light on Persistent Cultural Challenges is a three year (2022-2024) project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) BIO-LEAPS Research Coordination Network (RCN) grant mechanism. The goal of LED-BIO is to create a network of scholars that will crowdsource solutions to three persistent challenges that scientific societies face as they strive to build inclusive and equitable communities. The three challenges are:

  • Lack of data to track scientific society membership demographic composition
  • Lack of integration of scientists in transitional stages of their careers into disciplinary CoPs
  • Lack of diversity among highly visible thought leaders, including speakers in scientific programs

For the first and second year of the grant, the project convened a series of Town Hall and Think Tanks to gain a better understanding of the national landscape of these challenges for different stakeholders (Year 1) and how scientific and professional society leadership has attempted to meet these challenges and what has worked best for them (Year 2). Information about Town Hall and Think Tank dynamics, as well as links to past meeting materials can be found below.

For year 3, the last RCN year, we hosted a Hybrid Summit Meeting at the AGU Conference Center in Washington DC (October 2024) to share and discuss strategies scientific societies and communities use to create inclusive cultures around the RCN’s three focus areas!

LED-BIO Years 1 and 2 Meeting Dynamics 

Town Halls

In years 1 and 2, each day of LED-BIO’s meetings kicked off with a videoconference-based Town Hall opened to all who wanted to join. For each of these annual events, there were three Town Halls, one for each of the challenges the LED-BIO project aims to tackle. Each of these town halls opened with a short panel presentation to set the stage for the challenge that was be at the center of the discussion on that day. For year 1, panelists were scholars with first-hand knowledge of the challenge of interest–either through scholarly or lived experience, or sometimes both. For year 2, panelists were members of scientific or professional society leadership. This introduction to the topic was followed with small group engagement (7-8 stakeholders each) or breakout semi-structured discussions. LED-BIO has used content from these discussions to develop action plans for scientific societies to address the three challenges identified. These small group discussions are cross-institutional, cross-sector, and multidisciplinary conversations to achieve convergence in perspectives on the opportunities to advance inclusivity in STEM disciplines through scientific societies. The content of the discussions has been analyzed for themes, which are currently being used to develop thought-leadership papers and community recommendations for scientific societies to tackle the three identified persistent challenges they face and that hamper their diversity and inclusion efforts.

Think Tanks

On-site (hybrid-enabled, but most participants engage in person) Think Tanks followed each of the Town Halls described above. Think Tanks were open to a smaller group of experts to facilitate a deeper dive into the key issues articulated during the Town Halls. The host for these events was the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA. The MBL was chosen as the central location for LED-BIO networking activities because it has historically been a premier biological sciences research and education center that can function as a neutral location for identified stakeholders to come together to discuss identified challenges.

LED-BIO Year 3 Meeting Dynamics and Deliverables

For our year 3 summit, presenters were selected to lead interactive mini-workshops for attendees that exemplify the community standards that were identified during the course of the project. Moreover, during year 3, publications were prepared and published that highlight the collective discussions and crowdsourced recommendations. See the Resources and Books tabs for more information about these products.

LED-BIO program
Funding provided by the National Science Foundation
Questions? Email veronica.segarra@goucher.edu