About the Newkirk Center
Mission
The Center promotes appropriate and effective uses of research in the natural and social sciences to enhance the quality of life. It finds ways to develop and share research knowledge with the public and policy makers so they can make informed decisions on vital policy issues on law, education, environment, health care, crime, and public infrastructure.
The Center carries out its mission in several ways: through workshops, colloquia, Town Halls, Distinguished Visitors, and communication programs.
Priorities
The Newkirk Center encourages the use of high quality scientific findings and directs attention to instances where inadequate research has led to significant community changes. Emphasizing health, the environment, community development, education, and law, the Center will embrace the following principles in its operations:
- Enabling scientists to connect more easily with policy makers, practitioners, and citizens.
- Assisting the community to connect to the development of science intended to serve its needs.
- Harnessing the multidisciplinary capacities of UC Irvine and the University of California system-wide.
Current Projects
The Center has a program of seed funding for research that is relevant to the Center's mission.
To assist in decisions about applying, the following are examples of research proposals that are encouraged:
- Determining the practical uses of results of basic research. That effort may come from the original investigators or from an external observer of the research.
- Increasing the knowledge of relevant communities and policy makers about specific scientific results and the implications of those results.
- Using scientific theory in design of applied research that has potentially important social consequences.
- Determining effective methods to educate policy makers and the general public in the realm of scientific findings. The work may be at the general level or directed at a specific array of scientific results.
- Establishing collaborative relationships between scientists, on the one hand, and potential end users of scientific results at the local, state, national, or international level, on the other.
Director
Joseph F. C. DiMento, PhD, JD
Professor of Law and of Planning, Policy, and Design
Assistant Director
Elizabeth Eastin
Advisory Board
Francisco Ayala, Ph.D.
Recipient of the 2001 United States National Medal of Science
Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences
Susan Bryant, Ph.D.
Vice Chancellor, Office of Research
Professor of Biological Sciences
Bruce Clark, Ph.D.
California Seismic Safety Commission
Former President, Leighton and Associates
Anne Earhart
President, The Marisla Foundation
Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Social Ecology, Psychology and Social Behavior Criminology, Law and Society, Bren School of Law
R. Duncan Luce, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Department of Cognitive Sciences
Martha Newkirk, Ph.D.
Entrepreneur
William Parker, Ph.D.
Chairman and Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Jack Peltason, Ph.D.
Chancellor Emeritus UCI
President Emeritus, University of California
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
Sherry Rowland, Ph.D.
Nobel Laureate
Bren Chair, Earth System Science
Bren Research Professor of Chemistry
Diane Wittenberg
Executive Director, The Climate Registry
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