We thank our virtual host of the 2020 conference

Team composition, modes of collaboration, mentorship, and work climate all impact individual and organizational success. What helps and hinders the creation of opportunity and equity for women and other underrepresented minority groups in the process of research? What aspects of evaluation in a meritocracy system need to be addressed to ensure equal consideration? What data and insight is needed to inform research and policy to advance diversity and inclusion across the career pathway? How do we assess progress across different fields and apply learning of success across STEM, humanities, and social sciences? How are funders and institutions addressing issues of inequity at an organizational level, incentivizing action toward systematic change, and adapting evaluation practices to measure structural change? Here we will explore diversity, inclusion, and equity in research through several perspectives.

The term CRISPR was first named in 2001, less than 10 years after several scientists identified repeating DNA sequences in the genomes of microorganisms. In 2012, this basic research led to the development of a break-through gene editing system. Today, three decades after the first basic research was done, CRISPR-cas9 shows more than promise for personalized medicine, agriculture and food production, as examples,to impact individuals and populations. Foundational knowledge is yet to be created. Basic science remains in the top three research areas employing CRISPR, preceded by Cancer and Neuroscience, according to a recent survey (Synthego Benchmarking Report). How can practices of interdisciplinarity and collaborative approaches best support basic to translational research. How can funders work across agencies and regions that foster successful, collaborative, long-term research efforts from basic to applied science. How do we best integrate ethicists, public health, psychologists, and sociologists with geneticists, oncologists, and neuroscientists? What can mathematicians and physicists, engineers, computer scientists working on large scale research efforts offer as lessons learned?

Open science promises to accelerate reproducibility, communication, and debate with unprecedented opportunity to advance discovery and innovation towards finding efficiencies, developing economies, and public health initiatives; a promise exemplified by the ‘completely new culture of doing research’ in response to COVID-19. Looking from endeavor to practice, we invite discussion on costs, emerging roles, technology, incentives, competitiveness, as well as policies and regulations. How can these manifest across disciplinary differences? How might concepts, such as those put forth under ‘open science by design’, be applied across the ecosystem of government, for-profit, non-profit, and academic institutions?

Decades of investment in research and innovation have brought us to a new era of knowledge. But research is a human endeavor: with the usual characteristics of humanity, its strengths and weaknesses. We have all witnessed a number of attempts to increase the rigor, reproducibility and integrity of research. Solutions can come about through technological improvement, behavioral change and increased transparency: but they have to be ethical, community-led, and they have to be seen to be effective - by the research community, by funders, politicians and the general populace.
We invite researchers, administrators, funders, research evaluators, patient advocates and community leaders to discuss these issues that have such a profound effect on attitudes and trust towards the research endeavor.