Conference: RRSP: Responsible Collaboration through Appropriate Research Security

This workshop will engage national and international science and engineering experts, intelligence professionals, and social scientists in discussions that will help shape the emerging field of research on research security. The discussions will identify barriers and suggest approaches to answering questions about the nature, causes, and pervasiveness of foreign government threats to U.S. research. Safeguarding the nation’s research is part of the mission of the U.S. National Science Foundation and is essential to national defense. NSF consistently emphasizes the importance of balancing research security with the value of international collaboration in science and engineering. This workshop’s findings will enhance efforts to achieve such balance and inform future research on research security. The workshop will consist of pre-workshop virtual activities and a 2.5-day in-person meeting. The specific aims of the workshop are: (1) to bring together a diverse array of national and international experts from an equally diverse array of public and private organizations in various disciplines, (2) to identify and discuss current themes, major issues, and challenges in further developing this field, (3) identify future directions and to develop a vision and roadmap for future research inquiries, and (4) to analyze and collate responses, presentations, and discussions in a workshop report to be published by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy for use by the entire research community. The workshop will generate a roadmap of innovative and transformative research areas that integrate research security with public policy, epidemiology, mathematics, physics, computer sciences, engineering, and social sciences, which will ultimately support a research environment that is open as possible and as secure as necessary. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.