Founded in 2014 as the National Alliance for Broader Impacts, the NSF-funded center supports the professionals who help researchers show how their science serves the public
Baxter gives the opening keynote at the ARIS Summit in Omaha on April 3, 2024. Photo: ARIS video
Dr. Raven Baxter gave the opening keynote of the 12th annual ARIS Summit on April 3, 2024, at the Omaha Marriott Downtown in Omaha, Nebraska. Nearly 150 broader-impacts professionals gathered for the three-day meeting, themed "Centering Partnerships: Meeting in the Middle."
She took the stage on the Summit's first morning in a pink blazer, microphone in hand, beside the ARIS banner.
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) judges every grant proposal on two criteria, intellectual merit and broader impacts. The second asks how the research will benefit society. Broader-impacts professionals help researchers plan and carry out that part of the work.
Those criteria were under review that spring. In 2023, the National Science Board created a commission to assess both, with recommendations due by May 2024, AIP FYI reported. It was the first formal look at the criteria in about 12 years. The Summit held a plenary with program officers from the National Science Board's NSF Merit Review Commission.
The meeting also followed a cut to NSF's 2024 budget of about 8%, to just over $9 billion, according to AIP FYI. Public confidence in scientists had fallen too. In November 2023, Pew Research Center found that 73% of U.S. adults had a great deal or fair amount of confidence in scientists, 14 points lower than early in the pandemic.
The Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence for the Study of STEM Interventions, known as the SOSI Center, co-hosted the Summit and ran pre-conference workshops on April 2. The program also included the first ARIS Impact Slam. Dr. Alicia J. Knoedler, head of NSF's Office of Integrative Activities, also gave a keynote. An awards ceremony at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium honored Broader Impacts Champions and ARIS awardees.
Baxter on the keynote stage at the 2024 ARIS Summit. Photo: ARIS
"Her keynote was amazing, fun and very powerful!" said Susan D. Renoe, who leads ARIS at the University of Missouri. On the ARIS website, Laura Sample McMeeking of Colorado State University called the Summit "the best, most productive conference I have ever attended!"
ARIS, the Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society, began in 2014 as the National Alliance for Broader Impacts. It took its current name in 2018. Housed at the University of Missouri and funded by NSF, it calls itself "the largest U.S.-based organization focused on impact." Its membership topped 1,600 in 2024.
Baxter with Summit attendees in Omaha. Image: ARIS video
Baxter is a molecular biologist and science communicator, known online as Dr. Raven the Science Maven. Her Ph.D. research at the University at Buffalo focused on science communication. The next day, she gave the keynote at the Nebraska Women in STEM Conference in nearby La Vista.
The Summit program is on the ARIS website, and ARIS posted a highlights reel from the Summit on YouTube.
Dr. Raven Baxter joined National Fair Housing Alliance President and CEO Lisa Rice on June 28, 2026, for a fireside chat on housing discrimination at the alliance's national conference in Washington.
Dr. Raven Baxter joined three fellow University at Buffalo alumnae on the UB Distinguished Keynote Panel at the 4th Annual WNY Leadership Summit on May 29, 2026.
Dr. Raven Baxter gave the interactive closing keynote of SCIENCE TALK '26, the Association of Science Communicators' 10th conference, in Portland, Oregon, on March 27, 2026.
