Dr. Timothy Johnson
Timothy Johnson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago, and Adjunct Faculty Member in the Center for Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Studies at Arizona State University. He also served as Director of the University of Illinois at Chicago Survey Research Laboratory for 23 years. For most of his career, his research focus has addressed sources of survey error in health and social statistics with an emphasis on cultural variability in measurement and nonresponse errors and the sampling of professional populations such as health care clinicians and scientists. Johnson’s work has been recognized by the American Statistical Association (Fellow, 2015) and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement, 2023). He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, edited or co-edited 7 books & monographs and authored more than 40 book chapters. His research can be found on both Google Scholar and ResearchGate.
Lesley Forst Michalegko
Lesley is the research project manager for the Center for Science, Technology & Environmental Policy Studies (C-STEPS) at Arizona State University. In this role, she supports a variety of research projects and the Center’s overall operations including: budget and human resources management, pre and post-award grant management, and assisting with the development of an online platform, SciOPS, designed to showcase STEM experts’ input on current events and timely science and tech issues.
Lesley holds a Master of Arts in Environmental Studies and a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Environmental Studies and Psychology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She has over ten years of experience working in the public sector, with a focus on public policy as it relates to sustainability and environmental protection. Prior to joining C-STEPS, Lesley worked in ASU’s University Sustainability Practices department where she designed and implemented programs and policies to advance sustainability across the institution. She has also held previous roles as a rule and regulation writer for the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and as an event manager for ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability.
Lesley began her work in the public sector through the AmeriCorps Public Allies program, where she gained leadership and community development training, while serving at 10-month apprenticeship at the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy, an environmental conservation non-profit based in Scottsdale.
Lesley has held several leadership roles in community outreach and policy development in the Phoenix area, including serving as appointed commissioner on the City of Phoenix Environmental Quality & Sustainability Commission and most recently, member of Valley Leadership Accelerate 2019 cohort. She is currently pursuing a J.D. at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law.
Dr. Eric Welch
Eric W. Welch is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University where he teaches organization theory, public policy, and social network analysis. He received his doctorate from the Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs specializing in science and technology policy and environmental policy and administration. Professor Welch directs the Center for Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Studies (C-STEPS) at ASU. He is a Senior Global Futures Scientist in ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and an affiliated faculty member in the the ASU Center for Organization Research and Design, the ASU Center on Technology, Data and Society, the ASU Sweete Center for Sustainable Food Systems, the ASU Institute for Social Science Research, and the ASU School for the Future of Innovation and Society.
His research interests include climate change adaptation, science and technology policy, technological innovation, research and data governance, and public management. He has 25 years of experience evaluating large multi-institution, interdisciplinary research projects in which he provides formative and summative assessments for research design and institutionalization, distributed network collaboration structures, integration of diversity, workforce development and knowledge production. He has evaluated major research investments for USAID, UN FAO, NIH, and the NSF EPSCoR program.
Welch has received funding for previous research projects from NSF, NIH, USGS, USAID BFS, USDA NIFA, UN FAO and others. He has led NSF-funded multi-institutional projects on topics including: data integration for decision making at the water-energy nexus; globalization of the scientific workforce; academic research excellence and competitiveness; impacts of regulation on science; crisis response; genomic data sharing and governance; university invention commercialization; and team science and collaboration. He is also the director of the Scientist Panel Opinion Survey (SciOPS) a science expertise opinion aggregator designed to bring greater communication and close knowledge gaps between science and society.
Welch is currently leading a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded international team focused on understanding the role of meso-level organizations in amplifying investment in climate change adaptation finance in Ghana, Malawi, South Africa and Kenya. He is also currently collaborating with researchers at CIRAD France and the UN FAO to develop national guidance for advancing science policy interfaces for agrifood systems. The center he directs, CSTEPS, is supporting two long-term survey-based studies in public management: the Technology in Government Survey and the Transit Adaptation to Climate Change Survey.
Professor Welch has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, refereed proceedings, monographs, and book chapters. His most recent academic work is visible at google scholar and research gate. He has published in journals such as Social Science and Humanities (Nature), Social Networks, Global Food Security, Research Policy, Science and Public Policy, OMICS, New Phytologist, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Biobanking and Biopreservation, Business Strategy and the Environment, Environmental Management, Journal of Technology Transfer and Technovation. He has also recently published outside of academia including for the CCAFS program on farmer networks and climate smart technologies, the UN FAO on the implications of digital sequence information on the International Plant Treaty, and the global governance of research and development.
