The roughly 12,000 new research grants awarded each year by the National Science Foundation (NSF) serve as fuel for discovery and innovation. For this reason, there are few roles more exciting than serving as an NSF program director, overseeing grant awards in one of the seven directorates. Tara S. Behrend, PhD, is an NSF program director in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences directorate. Specifically, she serves as director for the Science of Organizations (SoO) program, which funds projects that increase our understanding of organizations and the people within them. Behrend is also what’s known as an NSF “rotator,opens in new window” which means she’ll go back to her faculty position as an industrial and organizational psychologist at Purdue University in fall 2022.
The Monitor talked with Behrend about how proposals are funded and what role a program director plays in that process.
What can you tell us about how and why grants are awarded?
NSF has two merit review criteria: intellectual merit and broader impact.
Intellectual merit means: Does this project stand to advance basic science and perhaps make a transformational contribution and fundamentally change the way that some kind of research is done? Broader impact means asking how the project will contribute to society and whether it will make the world a better place in some way.
For example, a psychology project NSF funded recently has implications for cybersecurity and how insider threats can be mitigated. The researchers are developing an emotional-regulation intervention tool to help workers manage their emotions at work, specifically the kind of negative emotions that lead to people losing their temper or saying things they would regret. A lot of insider threats to the cybersecurity of U.S. businesses and other organizations start off with a disgruntled employee taking some kind of action that leads to a cybersecurity issue.
How does a scientist become an NSF program director and what does the job entail?
Their application process to become an NSF director looks a lot like selection for an academic job—you give a presentation and interview with current program directors and others in the division. The pipeline, typically, is that you get involved with NSF before you apply, such as by reviewing grants or serving on a panel of experts who meet to discuss the proposals, read the reviewers’ assessments, and add their own comments about the strengths and weaknesses of intellectual merit and broader impacts for each proposal. The role of a program director is to manage the program in every way. I assign reviewers to proposals and run the panel of experts who review the proposals themselves, consider the reviews of others, and then make funding recommendations. I make my final determination based on what the panel recommends to me, what my own read of the situation is, and what I think the priorities of the program should be.
I’m here on a two-year assignment. About half of the program officers are rotators and half are permanent, which is ideal because you get a regular influx of new ideas mixed with people who know what’s going on and how things work. My job as a rotator is to bring my expertise and my ideas and also learn from the people who’ve been here for many years.
What does the Science of Organizations program fund?
The SoO funds research that advances our understanding of how organizations develop, grow, and operate. In short, the research aims to improve the design, development, and management of any organizations that produce goods and services, provide jobs, achieve social goals, and perform other crucial functions for society. For instance, during the pandemic, SoO funded a number of projects that sought to understand the effects of the pandemic on work and workers.
Can you explain how your own research may factor into your role as a program director?
I’m interested in ways that technological innovations can either make people’s lives better or worse and whether social and economic lines can determine who benefits and who doesn’t. It’s not about the circuits and wires for me; it’s about what tech can do to change people’s everyday experiences.
Lately, there’s been a lot of fear that innovations such as AI (artificial intelligence) and automation will take people’s jobs away. But we’re actually seeing that automation is used to make those jobs healthier and safer; it’s not replacing the jobs—it just involves using a technological tool.
I use my experience as a researcher to help ensure that my program supports a broad range of projects. I also make sure that I don’t just invite experts to the panel who think about the world the same way that I do. Their role is to give me advice, and if I only ask for advice from people who think like me, what’s the value of that? So, I work hard to think about including the whole domain of the field and representing each of those corners.
What, if anything, has surprised you about the grant application and funding process?
I’ve been in this position since October, and I feel like I’ve learned an enormous amount in a short period of time. There’s so much that goes into managing these programs that isn’t visible to someone on the other side. Principal investigators should know that the program officers are there as a resource for them, and they should call them if they have questions. Also, almost every program holds office hours before the proposal deadline so that people can call in and ask questions and listen to other people ask their questions, which can also be helpful because sometimes people may not know what to ask.
One thing that’s especially surprised and impressed me is the quality of the merit review process. The process is transparent and mindful about fairness and the conflict of interest [COI] policy is incredibly strict and detailed. If you’ve got a COI with a proposal, you don’t see it, don’t touch it—you don’t have anything to do with it!
I would encourage anyone who’s considering working at a funding agency at some point in their career to do it. It is a lot of work, but it’s also an incredibly valuable, meaningful, and rewarding experience.
