2025 AIP Research Agenda

A core component of AIP’s overall Research Strategy is the implementation of an Annual Research Agenda. Each year, AIP staff will work with leaders from AIP’s 10 Member Societies and AIP’s Board of Directors to establish and publish a research agenda that identifies three to seven topics on which we will concentrate our research activities for that year.

For the inaugural AIP Research Agenda, our research team will be focusing on the following five topics in 2025.

1. The Next Generation of Scientific Society Leaders

Scientific societies are essential to advancing the scientific enterprise, and like many major institutions in the United States, over the next decade we are going to witness a major shift, a passing of the torch of society leadership responsibilities from one generation to the next. Many changes that have occurred — in the function of scientific societies, in scholarly communication, in approaches to conferences and meetings, and in expectations around work and work cultures — have made it critical that we focus effort and attention on understanding how we can best engage, support, and enable knowledge transfers between generations of scientists to ensure the ongoing vitality of scientific societies and the scientific enterprise more broadly.

AIP will conduct new research to understand more about recent graduates’ interests and perspectives about engagement with scientific societies. Along with this, in close coordination with AIP’s Member Societies, we will identify and interview a cohort of early-career leaders from across AIP’s Member Societies to document their needs and interests and draw attention to their contributions to advancing scientific societies.

2. A Century of Breakthroughs in Quantum Science and Technology

The United Nations has declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, celebrating its integral part in the social and technical infrastructure of society. Documenting, preserving, and understanding the century of basic and applied research in the physical sciences that has made these advances possible is critical.

AIP will engage in activities that help physical science communities understand the last century of progress in this area to support further breakthroughs in the century to come. Building on our longstanding efforts to document the history of contemporary science, we will develop and launch a History of Quantum Science and Technology Survey, which will solicit reflections from key figures in quantum science and technology. Throughout this endeavor, we will work to go beyond the most widely known names and stories to add new depth and nuance to our understanding.

3. The Federal Physical Science Workforce

The public sector, through direct employment and through public-private partnerships sponsoring federally funded research and development centers, is a major employer of physical science professionals. However, to date, there has been relatively little work documenting the breadth and depth of the contributions of physical science professionals in public service. The U.S. Office of Personal Management (OPM) publishes openly available data with rich data public sector employees. By exploring the OPM data, we can begin to document and communicate the diverse and multifaceted ways physical science professionals are making an impact in public service. We can also use the OPM data to identify which federal agencies have the biggest needs for physical scientists in specific job series, and because it includes information about the length of service and age of employees, we will be able to predict how forthcoming retirements are likely to affect sectors of the federal physical science workforce. The OPM data is a valuable resource for understanding the federal science workforce, but given the major role that FFRDCs play in the physical sciences, it be critical to go beyond that dataset to engage with the network of FFRDCs to be able to document their physical science workforce as well. Based on these data sources, we can deliver reports and interactive data tools that will be useful for a wide range of stakeholders to plan careers and workforce development.

4. Climate, Atmospheric, and Oceanic Sciences Education Pipeline

Physical scientists play a critical role in responding to challenges brought about by global climate change, but currently there is no systematic effort to monitor and track the pipeline of undergraduate and graduate training in climate, atmospheric, oceanic science and meteorology. For half a century, AIP has honed its expertise in tracking and reporting on exactly this kind of data for physics and astronomy enrollments and degrees.

In collaboration with the American Meteorological Society, one of AIP’s 10 Member Societies, we will engage in a feasibility assessment to explore and pilot tracking and reporting on Climate, Atmospheric, and Oceanic Science and Meteorology degree programs at U.S. institutions of higher education, potentially establishing an ongoing effort to do so; this will complement our ongoing tracking of physics and astronomy programs. We will also explore the feasibility of extending our historical collecting and documentation efforts to these domains.

5. Faces of the Physical Sciences

Pictures of scientists play an important role in shaping ideas about what kinds of people practice science and what kinds of activities scientists engage in, so it is critical we have access to rich and diverse visual documentation of both who practices science and the full lives science professionals lead. The most widely used resource of AIP’s Niels Bohr Library & Archives is the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, a collection of more than 30,000 photos documenting the lives and work of physical scientists. Based on an original donation of Nobel laureate and amateur photographer Emilio Segrè’s personal photo collection, the collection has subsequently grown through donations from a wide range of scientists.

A core strength of this collection is its inclusion of both formal and candid photos of physical scientists. With that noted, the collection in its current state does not represent or cover enough breadth in the diversity of professionals and practices in the physical sciences. Digital technology has dramatically increased the extent to which physical scientists are documenting their lives and worlds in photography, so we have a major opportunity to build on the legacy of Segrè’s gift. This year we will engage with stakeholders through multiple approaches to invite donations of additional photos, with a specific focus on diversifying and expanding this archive. Along with this, we invite scholars to explore ways to study and understand this rich visual legacy to help us better understand the physical sciences in the 20th and 21st centuries.

To stay informed on these and other research projects subscribe to AIP Research Updates and download a PDF of this agenda below.