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Georgia Tech's
Research Value Mapping Program was founded in 1996, focusing on evaluation of
government-sponsored research projects, programs and institutions. Its initial
funding source was the Department of Energy's Office of Science (still a core
funding agency) but since that beginning point support has been provided by the
National Science Foundation (with grants from the Social, Behavioral and
Economic Sciences division, the Education Directorate and the International
Division), the National Institutes of Health (NICHD), and foundations support
from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation.
The RVM Program is housed in the Georgia Tech's D.M. Smith Building (main
campus) and in the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology
Building (a state center of excellence of the Georgia Research Alliance)
building on 14th Street in Atlanta. The program is interdisciplinary and
includes faculty, research scholars and students with backgrounds in, among
other fields, economics, political science, sociology, engineering, planning,
and science studies.
The chief areas of research for the RVM Program include:
- Innovation, Management and
Performance in University-based Science and Technology Centers
- Research Impacts Evaluation
- Social Equity and Distributional
Impacts of Science and Technology (in cooperation with the Center for
Science Policy and Outcomes www.cspo.org)
- Dynamics of Scientific Collaboration
- Assessing Scientific and Technical
Human Capital
- Technology Transfer studies
- Government Laboratories Structure and
Performance
- Assessment of Information Technology
Infrastructure
- Internet Policy (in cooperation with
the Georgia Tech's Internet and Public Policy Project http://www.ip3.gatech.edu/)
A particular
objective of the RVM Program is to advance the state-of-the-art in research
evaluation and to provide training to doctoral students and postdoctoral
students in these new methods of research evaluation. Among the many
approaches it has developed is the "research value mapping" method,
an approach that conceptually addresses the all the ways in which scientific
and technical activities create (or destroy) value and, methodologically,
involves the blending of qualitative and quantitative approaches to assessing
research impacts.
The RVM Program
cooperates with researchers and officials in a number of nations including France, Germany,
Denmark, Finland, Bulgaria,
Korea, China, New Zealand,
and Argentina.
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