Our Impact of Science 2022 Conference is now open for pre-registration until the end of January! Sign up now to be guaranteed a spot, and we'll get in touch with you with more information soon.

The Impact of Science Conference will be held on-location in Leiden -- the 2022 City of Science -- over 3 days and will focus on stimulating societal impact of science by building stronger, long-term structures for knowledge and data exchange, as well as Public-Private collaboration.

The need for science to tackle challenges our world faces is not a new phenomenon, but has increasingly grown on a global scale, with the world facing pandemics, environmental changes and societal struggles. Policymakers, businesses and other societal actors are increasingly aware of the value of scientific data and knowledge to support them in overcoming challenges, but in many cases the interaction between worlds is not structured or stable enough. For the 10th time in a row AESIS will be organising their annual conference on Societal Impact of Science, to bring together stakeholders in- and outside of the science eco-system to engage with each other on the most effective approaches for implementing policies, strategies, methods and tools to optimise societal impact of science and evaluate success.

This year the international conference will be hosted in Leiden, the Netherlands. For many years initiatives have existed and been developed to build a strong infrastructure of collaboration between scientific institutions and societal actors, between public and private organisations, with the purpose of increasing interaction and mutual benefits. Researchers and policy makers have recently started building a more permanent structure to create alliances for impact, meanwhile strong collaboration between industry and science has existed in the thematic clusters called Topsectors for years. The Research Council of the Netherlands has been greatly investing in the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) and the VSNU continues improving their evaluation of scientific relevance in their Strategy Evaluation Protocol. These are only a few of the examples of good-practices and expertise that convinced AESIS to invite everyone to the Netherlands for this conference.

This conference will feature highly regarded and internationally recognised experts who will be discussing the contribution of research to the quality of life and well-being. The conference expects over 350 participants from more than 30 countries, bringing together experts such as R&D evaluators, university managers, research councils, policy makers, funders, and other stakeholders of impact. The goal is sharing, evaluating, and discussing best practices around the world on: policy strategies for societal impact, creating (long-term) alliances between stakeholders; regional, national, and international instruments for evaluating and achieving impact; current issues on i.e. public engagement, evidence-based policy, interdisciplinary approaches, and, harmonising definitions and assumptions. We are very excited to be working with our colleagues in the Netherlands and else where in the world to create the most valuable programme and experience for all of you who would like to learn about and contribute to science transforming the world. And we very much look forward to meeting you there!