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.