CSPC 2023 Conference Themes and Topics

Track 1: Science and Policy

• The national STI ecosystem: Strategy for the next ten years; building on strengths and opportunities; addressing weaknesses
  • Modernizing the federal research support system
  • Strengthening Intergovernmental coordination and cooperation
  • Learning from international experiences
  • Assessing and fostering Canadian global leadership in STI
  • Governance of Science, technology and innovation
• Managing the evolving/changing research landscape
  • Inter- and trans-disciplinarity, co-production of knowledge, effective integration of all fields of knowledge and ways of knowing
  • Science for social and economic objectives (including the UN SDGs)
  • Research security
  • Barriers and Opportunities in Open Science
  • Braiding Indigenous and Western knowledge
  • Optimizing benefits from national infrastructures, including data as infrastructure
  • Equity, diversity, inclusion, and racism in science
• Evidence for policy
  • Science advice for Parliament
  • Best practices for bridging research and policy
  • Standardization, quality and transparency
  • The impact of ChatGPT
• Science policy futures

Track 2: Science and Society

• Public trust
  • Mis- and disinformation
  • Science communication in a post-truth era
  • Diverse forms of knowledge and ways of knowing
  • Science and social justice
  • Social trust, cohesion, social innovation
• Systemic racism, otherism
• Science in support of democracy
• Science and Truth and Reconciliation
• Science policy and aging
• Science, technology and ethics
• Science and innovation: public education

Track 3: Innovation and Economic Development

• Canada’s Innovation strategy, 10 years outlook
  • Innovation in government investments in R&D and innovation
  • Regional development and innovation actions
  • Global Innovation Clusters
  • Digital challenges and strategy
• Emerging economic opportunities
  • The conservation economy & the circular economy
  • The blue economy
• Emerging and disruptive technologies
  • AI, including Chat GPT
  • Quantum
  • Gene editing
  • Ethical dimensions
• Sector policies and challenges
  • Canadian Mineral Strategy
  • Facilitating the energy transition, including transportation infrastructure
  • Biomanufacturing capacity, security and competitiveness
  • Cleantech

Track 4: Science, International Affairs and Security

• International STI agreements and Canada’s interest,
• Assessing and fostering Canadian global leadership in STI
  Managing Canada’s approaches to emerging international industrial strategies and knowledge sharing
• International opportunities, e.g.,
  • Horizon Europe
  • The Indo-Pacific strategy
• International collaboration
  • Large, concerted projects and major facilities
  • Security and cyber security
  • Foreign investment
  • Science, technology, innovation in the context of geopolitical shifts
• Science diplomacy and geopolitics

Track 5: Science and The Next Generation

• Research training
  • Revisiting the PhD
  • The welfare of research trainees
  • Fostering the next generation of science policy experts
• Career transitions
  • Transitions between sectors in the science ecosystem

Track 6: Grand Challenges

• Climate change
  • Mitigation and adaptation
  • Informing climate change action with data
  • Net Zero
  • Water resources and conservation
  • Nature-based solutions
• Healthcare
  • Measuring healthcare outcomes
  • Towards meaningful indicators of the health system
  • Accessibility of health data
  • Issues in sharing, using and reporting health data
  • Pandemic preparedness
• One Health
  • Zoonotic diseases
  • Environmental Health
  • Vector born diseases
• The North
  • Permafrost is the next big challenge
  • Science, security and Canada’s Arctic
• Food and agriculture
  • Future of food
  • A national food strategy?
  • Food Safety
• Energy sovereignty