Reminder: the President's fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget request to Congress will be released on Monday, February 2. The release of the President's budget serves as the unofficial kick-off to the annual appropriations process. Following its release, the next several weeks and months will see a flurry of Congressional hearings featuring Executive Branch officials on the details of the budget. COSSA will release its analysis of the request as it relates to federal agencies and programs of interest to the social and behavioral science community in the coming weeks.

The American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS), a COSSA member, has named Rebecca Blank, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, winner of the 2015 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize. The prize is awarded annually to individuals "who use sound analysis and social science research to inform public policy, while also contributing to the public discourse on society's most pressing issues." Among her many contributions, Blank is being recognized for her work at the U.S. Department of Commerce, as a member of the Council of Economic Advisors during the Clinton Administration, and during her various faculty positions. Blank will give a public lecture in Washington, DC on May 7.

The National Academies' National Research Council (NRC) is conducting a search for a new board director for its Committee on Law and Justice. Established in 1975, the Committee's mission is to "improve research methods and information to inform and support the development of national and state-level criminal justice policy, and to extend and help advance criminological and criminal justice research." The director will work with the Committee Chair, senior staff, and Committee members to "provide intellectual leadership by identifying current and emerging issues in criminal justice; develop workshops, conferences, and studies by separate panels of experts; and seek funds for these activities from Federal Government agencies and public and private foundations." Qualified candidates will have substantial experience working at the intersection of research, policy, and practice. More information about the position is available here.

The AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition, of which COSSA is a member, held its biannual meeting on January 15, focusing on the connections between Big Data and Human Rights. The Coalition brings together organizations and individuals who recognized a role for scientists and engineers in human rights.

Read on for details.

The National Academies' Keck Futures Initiative has issued a call for nominations for its 2015 Communication Awards. Prizes in the amount of $20,000 are given to individuals or teams "who have developed creative, original works that address issues and advances in science, engineering and/or medicine for the general public" in four categories: book, film/radio/television, magazine/newspaper, and online. More information, including nomination instructions and eligibility criteria, is available on the Futures Initiative website. The deadline for nominations is February 9, 2015.

Human behavior accounts for approximately 40 percent of the risk associated with preventable premature deaths in the U.S. Researchers are beginning to make progress in understanding some of the basic mechanisms that account for less-than-optimal initiation and maintenance of behavior change. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) via its Common Fund supports a Science of Behavior Change (SOBC) program initiative that "seeks to promote basic research on the initiation, personalization and maintenance of behavior change" (see Update, February 10, 2014). By integrating work across disciplines, the agency believes that this effort will lead to an improved understanding of the underlying principles of behavior change. Phase I of the SOBC program identified three domains with promising behavior change targets, given strong evidence for their central role in health behaviors relevant to multiple clinical endpoints. The domains include: (1) self-regulation, (2) stress reactivity and stress resilience, and (3) interpersonal and social processes.

The NIH recently released four new SOBC Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA) with the goal to "implement a mechanisms-focused, experimental medicine approach to behavior change research and to develop the tools required to implement such an approach."

Read on for details. 

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate is seeking proposals to develop large-scale data resources and analytic techniques to advance fundamental SBE research. Successful proposals will aim to create databases or techniques that will enable SBE research that would not otherwise have been possible and should have impacts across multiple fields or within broad disciplinary areas. Proposals are due February 23, 2015. The full solicitation is available on the NSF website.

The American Psychological Association (APA), a COSSA Governing Member, is looking for its next Executive Director for Science (see here). Former COSSA Executive Committee Chair Steven Breckler vacated the position and left APA in late 2014; Howard Kurtzman, current deputy, is serving as the acting executive director until the new head is named. The position oversees the APA Science Directorate. Applications are sought by March 13.