The National Science Foundation (NSF) hosted a Congressional Briefing entitled Strengthening America’s Infrastructure: How NSF Research is Supporting a Resilient and Innovative Future.
Dr. Sylvia Butterfield, acting director of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate opened with brief remarks highlighting NSF’s infrastructure portfolio. Dr. Butterfield emphasized the importance of social and behavioral science perspectives in resilient infrastructure and introduced five NSF-funded projects concerning American infrastructure.
Of the five panelists, Dr. Emily Balcetis, is a social psychologist at New York University and a 2016 FABBS early career awardee from the Society of Experimental and Social Psychology. Her NSF-funded research focuses on cybersecurity and risk assessment. Dr. Balcetis worked alongside computer engineer and panelist Dr. Quanyan Zhu, New York University, to study the human-centric aspect of cybersecurity and how cognitive biases weaken online infrastructure.
[Read about Dr. Balcetis’s Early Career Award win in “Believing is Seeing“]
The other NSF-supported panelists featured were Dr. Joel Conte, University of California, San Diego, Dr. Mina Sartipi, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga and Dr. Lilit Yeghiazarian, University of Cincinatti.
