To watch the recorded video of this webinar, please visit: https://vimeo.com/481735429
The current COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted formal mechanisms for international cooperation, knowledge exchange, people-to-people interactions and trainings. With most travel halted and many conferences canceled or postponed, the STEM workforce has lost its most effective mechanism to network and pursue new collaborations. Since the basic nature of the next generation of collaborations is based on access of data and is distributed along the nodes of power of science, we are currently witnessing a collapse of the global scientific enterprise to centers of excellence in the U.S., Europe and China, leaving behind countries from the global south. The current pandemic will only be resolved if all countries (North and South) are engaged; therefore, the need for a concerted convergence research effort to address the current pandemic through international cooperation is more urgent than ever. The Policy and Global Affairs’ Capacity and Network themes of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are launching a new webinar series to enable the community to have a dialog and learn from world experts the impact the pandemic is having on international scientific collaborations.

Speaker: Caroline S. Wagner

Title: International Collaboration During the COVID-19 Crisis: Autumn 2020 Developments

Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has galvanized the world’s research community into action. This has been the case at the international level, with collaborations being established early in the pandemic. After the initial shock of the early months of the global COVID-19 pandemic, international collaboration in COVID-19 research continues to grow but to show aberrant patterns compared to coronavirus research in pre-COVID times. The most affected nations tend to produce the greatest number of coronavirus articles, with output closely coupled to the rate of infection. COVID-19 research has fewer nations and smaller teams than pre-COVID research, a trend which intensifies during the pandemic. The United States remains the single largest contributor to the global publication output, but contrary to China’s dominance in the initial months of the pandemic, China’s contribution falls as the national COVID-19 caseload drops. China-USA collaborations drop as the pandemic continues, perhaps due to China’s reduced rate of publication on the topic, and perhaps due to political obstacles, or a combination of these factors. This presentation will discuss the patterns of collaboration.

Bio Sketch: Caroline S. Wagner is an Associate Professor at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs in Ohio State University. She conducts research in the field of science and technology and its relationship to policy, society, and innovation, with a particular focus on international collaboration. Prior to joining Ohio State’s faculty in 2011, Dr. Wagner was a policy analyst working with and for government in a career that spanned more than thirty years and three continents. She worked twice as staff member for the U.S. Congress, once as a Professional Staff Member for the Committee for Science, Space, and Technology, and once as an analyst for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. With the U.S. State Department, Dr. Wagner was stationed for two years at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea as an economic officer reporting on technological change in Asia. Dr. Wagner is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves as a consultant to the United Nations for the Sustainable Development Goals, and has served as a consultant to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Professor Wagner received her Ph.D. in Science & Technology Dynamics from Amsterdam School of Communications Research, University of Amsterdam.

Speaker: Malik Maaza

Title: Science Diplomacy in Time of Human Crisis

Description: The ongoing SARS-Cov2 pandemic has affected humanity in a singular manner. It has induced not only a severe economic slow down but radically reprofiled our societal behavior to each & all including the standard educational systems of teaching & learning. It has accelerated if not generalized the usage of ICT based technologies. Likewise, and within, it has boosted the international cooperation in view of converging to potential solutions for the fast detection of SARS-Cov2 & its inhibition.

From the African perspective & relatively to the North and several advanced nations in the South, the African scientific & educational communities are facing stern challenges caused by the mobility limitations within the continent as well as at the International level. Since the governmental expenditure of the bulk of African countries is very low (less than 1% GDP, except for South Africa ~1%) in the STI sector, the current pandemic has halted severely the R&D landscape of the full African community. Because, sound initiatives were implemented pre-pandemic, several research groups in various high education in the South are managing to be still R&D active in view of the acquired world class research infrastructure as well as advanced ICT platforms. Of such initiatives, one could mention the ISP Swedish International program/Uppsala University North-South program geared towards Latin America, Africa & South Asia), the Future Leaders African Independent Researchers (FLAIR) of the UK Royal Society and the DELTAS program of the Welcome Trust-African Academy of Sciences in addition to other initiatives within the framework of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).

Bio Sketch: Malik Maaza is a native of North Africa, holds a PhD in wave-matter neutron optics from the University of Paris-VI, is the current incumbent, in South Africa, of the UNESCO UNISA-ITLABS-NRF Africa Chair in Nanosciences & Nanotechnologies and the chairman of the African Network of Excellence; the Nanosciences African Network. He is a joint staff of the University of South Africa and the National Research Foundation of South Africa. He is a fellow of various Academies, including the African Academy of Science, the Islamic Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Arts & Sciences as well as the National Academy of Science of India & the Royal Society of Chemistry.

We encourage all participants to complete our survey following the webinar here: https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6045929/International-Collaboration-in-COVID-19-Webinar-Survey