Over the course of their two-year term of service, members of the 2026-2028 New Voices cohort will collectively produce a series of core projects??via a?collaborative working-group?format. Working group topics will be identified by each cohort early in their term of service and refined in coordination with National Academies program area leads working in the topic area. Each working group will focus on a key challenge facing the nation and mid-career peers across the scientific enterprise and produce core projects including cohort briefings, webinars, and symposia. Each project will reflect the New Voices approach of emphasizing interdisciplinary dialogue, cross-sector collaboration, and the perspectives of mid-career STEM experts.

New Voices Cohort 2026-2028 working groups include:

1. Global Competitiveness and Collaboration: A Case Study for Clean Energy Technology: Examines how nations can maintain technological and economic leadership while preserving the international scientific cooperation needed to address shared global challenges. Using clean energy as a case study, they are engaging with experts across sectors and are considering how countries can balance openness and collaboration with strategic priorities related to innovation, resilience, and security.
2. Facilitating Conditions for Long-Horizon Science: Explores the conditions that enable successful long-horizon efforts in science, engineering, and medicine, taking a multi-perspective approach that considers financial structures, technical requirements, and logistical constraints. By identifying the ecosystem of financial, technical, and logistical conditions that enable long-horizon endeavors, they are assembling a set of learnings and best practices to optimize the use of limited resources in support of ambitious, transformative research.
3. Grounding Science in Community Engagement: Relevance, Evidence, and Trust: Explores how strengthening community engagement promotes relevance, evidence, and trust in science. This working group examines how research can be done with communities. It will move beyond traditional discussions of science communication and engagement principles to explore concrete, replicable, and community-engaged practices for rooting research in societal relevance.
4. STEM Education in the Age of AI: Brings together multidisciplinary perspectives to develop a more cohesive, evidence-based understanding of AI’s implications for STEM education and workforce development. The group seeks to support the advancement of AI literacy and competency by connecting educators across formal, informal, and workforce learning environments, including K–12 and higher education, community colleges, museums, outreach programs, and family settings.