Events

Federal agencies released multi-year plans outlining their priority research questions. (See the Annual Evaluation Plans and Learning Agendas at evaluation.gov). These documents provide a roadmap for how external researchers might want to tailor their work to be more policy-relevant as well as present opportunities for researchers to formally partner with federal agencies to help answer priority questions. To provide illustrative guidance on how to get started on such a partnership, this event will showcase a variety of successful partnership models and will also dive into specific areas where researcher help is currently needed. We’ll include real examples and allow time for participant engagement to further illustrate the frontier of opportunity.

Speakers include:

• Patricia Currier, Director of Planning and Performance Management, U.S. Department of Interior
• Lauren Damme, Deputy Director, Chief Evaluation Office at U.S. Department of Labor
• Diana Epstein, Evidence Team Lead, U.S. Office of Management and Budget
• Brooke Hanson, U.S. Department of Interior
• Chris Heflin, Evaluation Officer, U.S. Department of Commerce
• Anne Herlache, Senior Manager, U.S. Internal Revenue Service
• Day Manoli, Georgetown University
• Katherine O’Regan, Professor of Public Policy and Planning, NYU Wagner
• Lynn Rodgers, Acting Director, Program Monitoring and Research Division, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
• David Yokum, Director, The Policy Lab at Brown University
• Rebecca Johnson, Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy

What's the right kind of school and at what age should a particular kid start? How do you encourage a healthy diet?

Join us for a discusion with Brown professor of economics and mom of two Emily Oster about her latest book, The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years

The Family Firm offers a classic business school framework for data-driven parents to think more deliberately about the key issues of the elementary years: school, health, extracurricular activities, and more.

Join us for a discussion with Mayor Marita Garrett of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, in the next installation of Leading Local, a speaker series featuring Mayors from across the country, discussing the challenges and opportunities of implementing policy changes at the city level.

Former Mayor of Central Falls and current Senior Advisor at The Policy Lab, James Diossa, will chat with Mayor Garrett about her close collaboration with the Borough's Police Department, the possibility of being annexed by Pittsburgh, what it's like to lead at the local level.

Join us for a discussion with Mayor Jorge O. Elorza of Providence, Rhode Island, in the next installation of Leading Local, a speaker series featuring Mayors from across the country, discussing the challenges and opportunities of implementing policy changes at the city level.

Former Mayor of Central Falls and current Senior Advisor at The Policy Lab, James Diossa, will chat with Mayor Elorza about his leadership style, experience enacting policy from ideation to implementation, and what it's like to lead at the local level.

Join us for a discussion with Mayor Stephen K. Benjamin of Columbia, South Carolina in the first installation of Leading Local, a speaker series featuring Mayors from across the country, discussing the challenges and opportunities of implementing policy changes at the city level.

Former Mayor of Central Falls and current Senior Advisor at The Policy Lab, James Diossa, will chat with Mayor Benjamin about his economic revitalization of Main Street, his tenure as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and what it's like to lead at the local level.

Storm surge barriers, levees, and other coastal flood protection megaprojects are being investigated as strategies to protect U.S. cities against devastating coastal storms and rising sea levels. But these projects are large-scale and complex, often taking years to decades to complete and costing billions of dollars with long-lasting impacts on the economy, environment, and society.

Dr. Paul Kirshen, professor of climate adaptation at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Dr. D.J. Rasmussen, an engineer and climate scientist who recently graduated from Princeton University’s School of Public Policy & International Affairs, will discuss the technical, environmental, economic, and political factors of why some coastal flood protection megastructures break ground in the U.S. while others do not, using Boston Harbor and Rhode Island’s Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in Providence–the first gated hurricane-protection structure in the U.S.– as case studies.

The Policy Lab is pleased to co-sponsor this Coastal State Discussion Series webinar, hosted by Rhode Island Sea Grant and co-sponsored by The University of Rhode Island's Coastal Institute and Department of Marine Affairs.

Join us for a talk with Paul Xu, Data Scientist at The Policy Lab during Brown's Love Data Week. Paul will focus on the issue of concept drift and its effect on the model implemented in the Early Warning System (EWS), which the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) uses to predict public high school students' risks of dropping out.

Join The Policy Lab and Love Data Week for a talk with Jonah Popp! Jonah and Brown University's Center for Evidence Synthesis in Health have developed ensembles of epidemiological models of the COVID-19 epidemic to help Rhode Island decision makers monitor the epidemic, forecast its trajectory, allocate testing and vaccination resources, and evaluate prevention and suppression policies. The models are fit daily to rich local outcome data and resource-use time series curated and provided by partners including the Rhode Island Department of Health and Brown University’s Policy Lab.

Join us to learn how researchers at The Policy Lab and Brown University quickly partnered with policymakers at the State of Rhode Island and supported the design and analytics of Rhode Island's statewide COVID-19 testing program.

Join us for a discussion with Dr. Austin Becker as he shares his insights from 15 years of applied research on how to advance climate resilience for coastal infrastructure.

Dr. Becker has conducted research investigations on topics including:

• Communicating storm impacts to emergency managers in Rhode Island
• Perceptions of climate change amongst port administrators (globally)
• Impacts of hurricanes on port communities
• Barriers to resilience investing at northeast ports
• Vulnerability assessments undertaken by US ports

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society (IBES) and The Policy Lab