The Healthy Research Ecosystems Alliance is an evolving social enterprise dedicated to new scientific processes which illuminate how our ongoing individual endeavors can find abundance and success in times of change and promote thriving together through bridging divides in science, the arts, and society now.

Meet the Team

The Problem

Unprecedented levels of social division, isolation and mistrust have accelerated conflict over distribution of academic and public resources. This conceals the humanity of researchers and members of the public from each other and even from themselves. Our diminished capacity to see each other as human is a formidable barrier to visualizing the relevance of advancements in research to daily life, human rights, and health. Developing more effective, scalable models which leverage engagement, artistic, and scientific processes as a collective engine for innovation, connection across division and thriving in daily life is essential.

The Solution

The Alliance uses reflective workshops to help researchers, entrepreneurs, funders, and community leaders visualize how access to greater resources, visibility and impact for their ongoing individual projects is possible with new scientific processes which join their separate work together. A model is used which reveals how seemingly disparate endeavors can be connected to form an engine which both amplifies individual success and tackles shared problems of division in science, society, and research systems simultaneously. This customizable model makes it easier for members to connect resources and talent across differences within a broader, unifying initiative to more effectively target their unmet needs in rapidly evolving environments.

These combined efforts create research ecosystems where curiosity-driven discovery, relationship-building across divides, and creative engagement around bioethics of present and future applications of science grow together. Through strategic resource use and reflective practice, these ecosystems strengthen their collective resilience and sustainability throughout the process of scientific discovery. They evolve in real time with the changing landscape of health needs and forge trust through connecting science with flourishing together.

What are the potential benefits of participating for Alliance members?

Shared benefits
  • Expanded impact and recognition of their respective endeavors for different audiences.
  • Stronger relational networks with greater capacity to adapt under uncertain conditions.
  • Connection to new markets and opportunities through different projects in the model.
  • Portions of increased profit for entrepreneurs directed towards community engagement with their products, Alliance administrative costs, and model impact evaluation for funders and research leadership.
  • Combining social, scientific, communications, and media projects builds foundations for more comprehensive models of biological, psychiatric, social phenotypes and outcomes individually and collectively, as well as drivers for their interactions with each other.
Benefits for Community Leaders and Social Researchers
  • Facilitating connections of upward mobility programs and patient/caregiver advocacy organizations to competitive academic institutions, scientific laboratories, and biotech entrepreneurs.
  • Increased opportunities to implement dialogue across divides on specific scientific projects, find compensated engagement leadership roles on these projects, and bridge differences through working towards shared goals.
Benefits for Media and Interdisciplinary Artists
  • Direct connection to working scientists, laboratories, the frontiers of biotech innovation.
  • Increased efficiency in gauging the current state of science and technology.
  • Access to many different community stakeholders across divides to facilitate creation of compelling, character-driven pieces accessible to broad audiences.
  • Access to community engagement and evolving bioethical discourse to ground artistic projects as vehicles for connecting aesthetics, community needs, and scientific creation.
Benefits for Scientists, EntREPeneurs, and Communities
  • More creative freedom and resilience to uncertainty at innovation frontiers.
  • Bridging preclinical and clinical projects using different model systems in the scientific anchor to strengthen capacity to view common scientific problems from different disciplinary perspectives.
  • Customized engagement frameworks designed collaboratively with experts from the integrated social endeavors for scientific laboratories and broader research initiatives.
  • Connecting research in the scientific anchor to related emerging applications in biotech start-ups.
  • Forging reciprocal commitment to understanding the humanity and curiosity of all participants as the foundation for trust in conversations across divides.
  • Illuminating relationships between the knowledge frames of science, bioethics, and lived experience as shared human processes of understanding and thriving in daily life.

How are the goals of the Alliance accomplished?

To produce these outcomes within the broader project, the model integrates three core components.

Social Endeavors

Includling upward mobility, dialogue across divides, community engagement, arts and multimedia projects.

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Scientific Anchor

Preclinical and clinical research projects and grants.

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Biotech Startups

Products or services related to and emerging from these projects and grants.

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The project is led by a small team of early-to-mid career members from each domain. Entrepreneurial, clinical, scientific and evaluative expertise are included to shape reflective workshops for ongoing assessment of the model’s impact and scalability at different timepoints. Collaboration with experts on media projects amplifies visibility of individual projects.

Is there a unifying initiative using a customized model that the Alliance is currently working on?

Yes. Neurobridge (NBi) is the first initiative. NBi leverages psychiatric and neurodevelopment research as an engine for thriving in civilians and veterans across social divides. Genetics, neuromodulation, and their applications are emerging areas of emphasis. The team leads plan to conduct workshops for international funding, research, and industry leadership to map additional resources and talent to labs and organizations in the emerging model’s core components.

Partner Institutions

We are researchers and scholars from the leading academic instituions.