ReForm Lab
ReForm Lab is a ‘science of science’ research space, where we ask socially relevant and pressing questions about how knowledge is created, shared, and governed across multiple scales by embracing interdisciplinary methods and collaborations. We aim to blur the disciplinary boundaries and exist at the interface of biomedicine/STEMM higher education, sociology, ethics, science technology studies, public policy, and organizational behavior.
Our lab derives its name, ReForm (Latin re: again, formare: to form/shape), taking inspiration from cell and developmental biology, where biologists investigate the principles and processes underlying how organs form in space and time. We aim to understand similar ReFormation principles to build equitable higher education institutions and research enterprises, which operate at social and societal levels.
Questions We Tackle
We use biomedicine/STEMM higher education as a model context to address the following questions:
-
WHO CAN DO SCIENCE AND INNOVATE? How do social dimensions of inequalities, such as socioeconomic status, gender, race, citizenship status/immigration policies, shape the higher education particularly scientific workforce such as graduate, postgraduate and faculty pools? How does such a scientific workforce contribute to technological innovations, breakthroughs, and research integrity?
-
HOW IS RESEARCH EVALUATED AND TRANSLATED INTO POLICY? How do institutions determine what counts as valuable, credible, and consequential knowledge? Which evaluation criteria are fair and predict long-term reproducibility? What happens to research after it is evaluated? How does it travel and gets transformed into policy, practice, and decision making?
Current Projects
1. Higher Education Workforce and Inclusive Excellence: We examine the relationships among socioeconomic status, financial burdens, and academic research career choices of the US postdoctoral population. We also investigate the institutional conditions that determine long-term faculty success, evaluation structures and expectation policies.
See: Yalcin, Esra, Martinez-Corral, Rosa and Chugh, Mayank*. "Retaining postdocs by recognizing their worth." Nature Biotechnology 41, no. 2 (2023): 296-298.
Working paper: Mujumdar, Arjun%, Choudhary, Bilal#, and Chugh, Mayank.* Different Titles, Similar Expectations? Comparing Promotion and Evaluation Criteria for Tenure and Non-Tenure Track Faculty at R1 Universities. %high-school #undergraduate authors
2. Citizenship Privilege and Impact on Research Scholars: We explore the concept of citizenship privilege and its integration into academic/higher education enterprise. We also investigate the impact of citizenship and visa/immigration policies on scholars' mental wellbeing, research productivity, and career progression.
See: Nofal, Michel, Espada-Ferrer, Raquel, Ganguly, Payel, and Chugh, Mayank*. "The Invisible Tax of U.S. Visa Bureaucracy on International Scholars". Nature Biotechnology, 44(8), 1406-1410
See: Chugh, Mayank*, and Tiffany Joseph. "Citizenship privilege harms science." Nature 628, no. 8008 (2024): 499-501.
3. Assessment and Evaluation Structures: We examine the teaching and mentoring structures that allow faithful assessment of undergraduate and graduate students learning. We also explore broader evaluation regimes that determine the impact of research.
Working Paper: Chugh, Mayank*. A Calibration-First Assessment Model for Mixed-Level Seminar Courses.
Working Paper: Chugh, Mayank*. The Fallacy of Impact Assessment Without Research Infrastructure.
Approach and Funding
Our approach is collecting and analyzing data among academic populations and lead grassroots style initiatives, advocacy efforts, and deliberations to inform equitable policy changes. We achieve this with the help of interdisciplinary collaborations, concepts, theories, and methods.
We are currently supported by:
1. Hrabowski Innovation Grant Fund
2. Mini-Grant, Department of Information Technology at UMBC
Background: Norman Rockwell, The Problem We All Live With, oil on canvas, 1963. Credit: The Kennedy Center