Amazon Science Community and Machine Learning University call for proposals — Spring 2022

Amazon is seeking to fund economics and social science research on the following topics:

• Scientific productivity metrics – high quality science can take years to develop and have a customer impact; how can we know in the meantime if a research team is flourishing or floundering?
• Scientific impact metrics – scientific work not only operates on long timelines, it has a cumulative effect.  One research paper may not get turned into a product or service, but it can serve as critical inspiration for the next research paper that does.  How can we assess the impact of a given research project, team, or individual, beyond basic tools like citation and patent metrics?
• Team-based research success factors – impactful science is increasingly done by teams; research teams to create the science, and engineering teams to implement scientific solutions on behalf of customers.  What are the most critical factors that cause a team to have scientific success, and what mechanisms can influence them?
• Individual-based research success factors – what are the key factors to individual scientific success, and which of these are a product of the institutional environment?  How can we optimize the physical and social environment to allow scientists to do their best work?
• Educational design – what drives success in technical courses when presented in-person, live remote, or self-paced?  What drives students to choose one option or the other, and how can we leverage hybrid formats to bring together the strengths of each of these?  What are the data-driven best practices for online education, particularly with regards to recent shifts in working practices?  How do we measure practical success when teaching scientific knowledge at scale?

Funding: $80,000 

Duration: 1 year

Research Authority due date: 30.6.22 8.7.22