AAAS-TWAS Course on Science Diplomacy 2025

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Washington DC, USA, and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Trieste, Italy, are seeking candidates to participate in the annual summer course on science diplomacy to be held on 21-24 July 2025 in person in Trieste, Italy. The AAAS-TWAS Science Diplomacy training program was established in 2014 to expose scientists, decisionmakers, diplomats and other interested stakeholders and institutions to science diplomacy concepts, explore key contemporary international policy issues relating to science, technology, environment and health, and build a skillset to allow for careers at the intersection of science and diplomacy. Over the past years, they have trained over three hundred emerging leaders from more than 50 countries to address science diplomacy from global and regional perspectives.

The workshop will take place as follows:

• 21 July (Monday): welcome dinner
• 22-24 July (Tuesday – Thursday): workshop
• 25 July: participants return to their home countries

Cost of Science Diplomacy

• Organizers will cover the expenses of pairs selected, including transportation, accommodation, visa processing fees, meals and incidentals.

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Eligibility for Science Diplomacy

To strengthen the connection between scientists and governmental officials, policymakers and diplomats, applications to attend the course are being invited from ‘participant pairs’. Both participants in the participant pair should ideally be living and/or working in the same country, but not be working at the same institution. Priority will be given to participant pairs from developing countries, and especially Science and Technology lagging countries.

The applicants in the ‘participant pair’ should share some common interest in the areas of science, technology and innovation. However, it is not necessary that they work or have been working together in the past.

The ‘participant pair’ will include:

• Participant 1: an Early-Career Scientist (ECS) who should be preferably 40 years or below, must have earned a PhD degree and whose research and wider engagement has international policymaking implications or applications, and
• Participant 2: a Decisionmaker (DM) from the policymaking arena, working on science, technology, and innovation-related matters. There is no age limit for the co-applicant decisionmaker nor the requirement of a PhD degree. On the other hand, this person should belong to one of the following policy-related categories:
  • A local or national government official;
  • A policymaker;
  • A diplomat;
  • Civil servant;
  • A representative of a research funding institution;
  • Staff or expert working for an international (e.g. UN) organization.

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Application

The deadline for submitting applications is 23 January (at midnight, CET time zone). It is strongly suggested that candidates do not submit applications too close to the deadline in order to avoid that last minutes technical glitches or time zone differences may impede submission of the online application on time.

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