SBE 2020 Announcement

Ernst Berndt, Director of the NBER Program on Technological Change
and Productivity Measurement, is forwarding the following email to you:

Dear Colleagues,

Yesterday we made the next step on our efforts to ask for the
scientific community's advice in shaping our priorities for the
future. The letter opens with this observation:

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the social,
behavioral, and economic sciences face extraordinary opportunities to
address next-generation research challenges. The landscape is vast
and complex, stretching across temporal and spatial dimensions and
multiple levels of analysis -- from studying the human brain
to implications of decision making in a dynamic and fragmented yet
interconnected world. As we look forward 10 or even 20 years, the
Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the
National Science Foundation (NSF/SBE) seeks to frame innovative
research for the year 2020 and beyond that enhances fundamental
knowledge and benefits society in many ways.

This request is part of a process that will help NSF/SBE make plans
to support future research. Other activities will include a report by
the Directorate's Advisory Committee about the grand challenges
facing the SBE sciences over the next decade and recommendations from
the Directorate's staff. The insights resulting from this process
are threefold: They will inform the substance of future research,
the capacities to pursue that research, and the infrastructure to
enable investigations that will be increasingly interdisciplinary and
international and will involve multiple perspectives and intellectual
frameworks, differing scales and contexts, and diverse approaches and
methodologies.

I am writing to request your help in disseminating our request for
advice to the largest audience possible. Could you send this out to
whatever individuals or groups you think would be useful to ask for
contributions? Because the deadline is short (September 30, 2010), we
are especially eager for your assistance.

The DCL, which, I've also attached to this email, can be found at this URL:

<http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf10069>http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf10069

Individuals and groups who wish to suggest ideas to SBE should do so
at this web site, following the instructions there:

<http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/>http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/

Thank you for your help in getting the word out. Please don't
hesitate to let me know if you have questions.

Best regards,

Myron

Myron P. Gutmann
Assistant Director, Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
National Science Foundation

e-mail: mgutmann_at_nsf.gov
Phone: 703-292-8700