Societal impact of science: are there best practices?

Abstract:

Achieving societal impact of science is nowadays seen as an important task for the academic community, including not only the researchers themselves, but also policy makers, university managers, institute directors and research funders. This task stands next to the known role of science to advance and transform the frontiers of our knowledge. Here curiosity driven and applied research are mostly seen as two sides of the same coin, where their interaction may set the best conditions to create impact. What is societal impact, how is it achieved, how is it measured, how is it assessed across different disciplines (e.g. engineering and social sciences), what is the role of education, and what strategies may be the best? These questions will be addressed in this talk and examples will be shown.