Incubated by CIC, New Institute for Research on Innovation and Science Launches in 2015

The new Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS), launching in January 2015, is a national collaborative that will build the data and tools that will allow researchers, government agencies, policy makers, and others assess the social and economic impact of academic research.

IRIS is an outgrowth of UMETRICS, the CIC's groundbreaking effort to build and provide a data platform for large-scale systematic analysis of the infrastructure and outcomes of university-based science.  Incubated by the CIC, UMETRICS is a collaborative of researchers from the American Institute of Research, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, and the Ohio State University. Using data that came from the STAR METRICS project, a partnership between federal science agencies and research institutions to document the outcomes of science investments to the public, UMETRICS researchers were for the first time able to illuminate the breadth of the scientific workforce and the national impact of the research supply chain that is funded by federal grants.

Building on the $10 million in funding received by UMETRICS, IRIS has received grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to further develop resources and create a stable, secure, and reliable infrastructure of data for the social science community that can grow and develop over time.

Located at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR), IRIS will be organized as a network of collaborating universities, federal agencies, and other stakeholders that will work together to develop and sustain a national resource of data and analytical tools for both scientists and policy makers.  Key partners in the Institute include CIC and AIR, Ohio State University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the University of Chicago, and the U.S. Census Bureau. A central interdisciplinary team will collectively define scientific goals, develop a community of scholars engaged in aspects of the research, and make material improvements to the core data.

“This funding will allow us to study the full public value of federal, institutional, and private investment in research in unprecedented detail,” said Barbara McFadden Allen, Executive Director of the CIC. “Data and insights from this work will provide a solid base of understanding for a wide range of future policy decisions.”

For more information:
CIC UMETRICS
IRIS