Andrew Feig
Research Corporation for Science Advancement
Editor
The Biophysicist
What are you currently working on that excites you?
My current position as Senior Program Director at Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) involves fertilizing basic scientific discovery by providing funding for early-career faculty through our grantmaking programs. This position lets me think broadly about how the physical sciences can contribute to solving important societal problems and how we should deploy resources in an effective manner. Biophysics touches on many of these initiatives, including current programs related to bioimaging, the gut-brain axis, and detecting and mitigating zoonotic threats. As a foundation, we also work hard as part of these initiatives to develop communities of scientists that cross disciplinary silos and initiate collaborations among faculty who might otherwise never have met and learned about their shared interests. This has forced me to think deeply about why we have conferences and convenings (either in person or virtual) and how we structure those meetings to accomplish our goals. While in my former faculty role, I would not have had the opportunity to work so broadly across disciplines and to marshal resources toward these problems the way I can working for a foundation that supports basic science.
What have you read lately that you found really interesting or stimulating (a paper, a book, science or not science)?
I recently read The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker. At the beginning of the pandemic, we had to rapidly transition to accommodate work from home and travel restrictions. This change required us to rethink many of our interpersonal interactions, whether they were how we communicated with co-workers from our offices/laboratories/departments, how we taught, how we conducted our collaborations, or how we held conferences. In my role at RCSA, I am a convener of many workshops and gatherings, and it was important to ensure that our work continued to advance despite these changes, and that required intentionality, respecting the virtual environment of these meetings. We all attended virtual events where organizers simply took the agenda from their face-to-face conference and implemented it on a webinar platform. Unfortunately, many of these events were exceedingly painful to attend and not overly productive.