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The MIT Policy Lab on the Center for International Studies works with researchers throughout the Institute to develop and improve connections between the worlds of academia and public coverage. Led by Associate Professor Chappell Lawson, who serves as college director, and Drew Story, who serves as managing director, the MIT Policy Lab has supported over 110 coverage affect tasks thus far. In this Q&A, Story discusses the aim and motivations of the lab, its present tasks, and his imaginative and prescient for leveraging MIT experience past academia.
Q: What is the Policy Lab and what do you do?
A: The Policy Lab is an affect magnifier for MIT researchers. When students wish to see their work have an effect on public coverage, we empower and assist them to do exactly that. We scour MIT for policy-relevant analysis, work with researchers to develop coverage affect plans, prepare researchers tips on how to be helpful to policymakers, and supply modest funding to facilitate engagement. I’m right here to decrease the barrier of entry into the world of coverage and to scale back the friction within the hand-off from tutorial to policymaker.
Q: What was the unique impetus to launch the Policy Lab at MIT?
A: To put it merely, policymakers aren’t studying tutorial articles. This implies that, no matter how spectacular or transformative your work is in your subject, your Nature paper, your JACS paper, your American Economic Review paper aren’t being mentioned in metropolis halls or within the halls of Congress. And for his or her half, researchers are usually not geared up with the coaching, the assets, or the institutional incentives to have interaction with policymakers. Nobody will get tenure as a result of 15 mayors throughout the nation applied their suggestions for tips on how to optimize visitors lights for much less congestion and fewer accidents, although the folks in these cities would definitely thank them. You can’t blame teachers for chasing the metrics by which they’re evaluated for tenure and promotion: papers, citations, grant {dollars} received, college students graduated, patents, and many others. But this has led to a chasm between teachers and policymakers, so the Policy Lab was created to construct a bridge throughout that chasm.
Q: How does the Policy Lab complement the work of the MIT Washington Office?
A: We work intently with the Washington Office, however our emphases and the assets we every provide to researchers are totally different. The Policy Lab engages with policymakers in any area whereas the Washington Office is concentrated completely on the federal authorities. The Policy Lab works with PIs to proactively share their experience or take into account public coverage implications within the design of analysis tasks, whereas the Washington Office tends to contact particular person college when the White House, a federal company, or Congress has expressed an curiosity in a analysis space. The Policy Lab excels at working intently with people or small groups for six months to a 12 months or extra, whereas the Washington Office usually brings collectively bigger teams of school for shorter-term efforts to advocate for or advise on coverage.
Q: How does the Policy Lab evaluate with comparable choices at different establishments?
A: Many different universities and scientific societies try to fill in these gaps as effectively. Some universities have coverage facilities dedicated to sure matters, some universities have skilled improvement programming to organize a handful of researchers to have interaction in coverage, and others have a conventional college of public coverage. Beyond campuses, scientific societies attempt to inject researchers into the coverage course of by way of year-long fellowships. But nobody (that I do know of) has a mannequin just like the MIT Policy Lab, with devoted workers, proactive and reactive capabilities, modular and customizable assist for researchers, and an method inclusive of all analysis disciplines and all coverage domains.
Q: What are a few of your present tasks?
A: We’ve acquired a powerful array of tasks proper now: a number of within the realm of local weather change coverage, a undertaking on restoring and bettering provide chains within the wake of pure disasters, a undertaking on childhood schooling in Haiti, a undertaking on the environmental impacts of deep seabed mining, amongst others. Descriptions of our present and former tasks are all obtainable on our website.
Q: How does your background inform your imaginative and prescient for the Policy Lab?
A: I’m an educator / PhD engineer with coverage expertise at totally different ranges, who actually believes academia owes extra to taxpayers than we’re presently giving them for his or her funding in our analysis. And this isn’t too totally different than the MIT mission assertion that references serving the nation and the world, and bringing information to bear on the world’s best challenges.
The imaginative and prescient for the Policy Lab is to ship a return to society by getting MIT’s analysis and experience into the arms of decision-makers across the nation and world wide who’re in positions to make use of it. Ideally, the Policy Lab would assist sufficient PIs amplify the affect of their analysis that it prompts discussions inside the Institute of tips on how to enhance the motivation construction of promotion and tenure to reward one of these real-world affect of analysis. But if the Policy Lab goes to serve all researchers at MIT, we might want to develop. Right now, 12 year-long tasks are a full load for me. It can be unbelievable to develop sufficient to have a Policy Lab manager devoted to every college and the school.
Q: How can people at MIT make the most of Policy Lab assets?
A: Anyone at MIT with PI standing can submit a proposal for a Policy Lab undertaking at any time. I’m very happy to take a seat down and focus on coverage engagement concepts with researchers, pre-proposal as effectively. Aside from formal tasks, the Policy Lab runs research-to-policy workshops over IAP [Independent Activities Period] for anybody within the MIT group and has an online course on MITx obtainable for anybody across the globe.
This article has been up to date to extra totally characterize the work of the MIT Washington Office.
