New Voices hosted it's semi-annual gathering at Biosphere2 in Oracle, AZ from March 4-6 in the midst of the deepening COV-19 public health emergency. The meeting, organized in collaboration with Institute for the Future, was a foresight workshop organized around 'The Future of PhD Education' and how the system could be redesigned for the year 2030 without current constraints or incremental advances.
Members seized on the opportunity to form a COV-19 working group that has since taken quick action to build an AI chatbot called 'Jennifer' to direct users to reputable sources of information about COV-19 and work with the National Academies' Board on Higher Education and Workforce to draft a workshop proposal on virtual options for post-secondary education institutions to improve their response to COV-19.
Sunset over Biosphere2 (photo credit: Abhishek Roy).