Meet the PhD candidate who oversaw the launch of ASU’s partnership with AAAS

If you attended the massive American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in mid-February, you might have caught a glimpse of Daniel Bisgrove speed walking through the Phoenix Convention Center or laughing with conference attendees at ASU’s booth in the expo hall.

For Bisgrove, a PhD candidate in the biology and society program, the conference was more than a networking opportunity: It was the culmination of the work he’s done over the past year.

Bisgrove, an enthusiastic member of the Arizona State University student community, conducts research on how zoos affect people’s attitudes toward other species. Last year, he added onto his workload by taking on a role with ASU’s Knowledge Enterprise as the program manager for the university’s newly founded collaboration with AAAS – –a job with a long list of duties that was integral to carrying out the conference.

“He was absolutely amazing to work with,” says Lara Ferry, the vice president of research within ASU’s Knowledge Enterprise. “He made every part of my involvement seamless and pain free.”

Ferry noted how Bisgrove was especially helpful in thinking through how to position the ASU booth in the conference’s expo hall.

“We attracted a lot of foot traffic over the course of the conference. I think he saw in his mind’s eye how it could look and feel, and why people would be drawn in, and he was so right,” Ferry reflects.

Bisgrove took on many other tasks for the conference: He recruited dozens of student volunteers to serve as greeters; scheduled tables to feature around 20 different ASU colleges, centers and programs; coordinated with Dreamscape to ensure they could get their enormous mobile classroom into the conference center; and helped organize elements of several events, including the massive opening plenary.

But Bisgrove’s duties started long before the conference itself. Over the past year, he’s helped set up events like a fireside chat between Michael Crow and AAAS CEO Sudip Parikh, as well as a visit from the editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, Holden Thorp.

He also worked to promote AAAS’s free Elemental Membership for the entire ASU student body, which students are still able to claim.

“We’re up to over 7,000 Elemental Members at ASU, which is great. But there are a lot more people at ASU, so we’ve still got some work to do.”

On top of that, Bisgrove also marketed the newly created ASU Science Prize for Transformational Impact to researchers at institutions around the country.

“The prize exists to recognize people who are doing innovative, interdisciplinary work that’s really focused on having an impact on policy and people’s everyday lives,” Bisgrove explains.

The first- and second-place winners of the science prize received $30,000 or $10,000, respectively, as well as a publication in Science. The prize aims to incentivize broader support of interdisciplinary research — which is published less frequently in major scientific journals, and less awarded by science prizes — specifically by uplifting researchers outside of ASU.

“ASU already values interdisciplinary research that serves society,” Bisgrove emphasizes, “so by picking someone not at ASU, we want to make sure that the enterprise of science as a whole is better able to recognize that work.”

This year’s winners included Meha Jain, a University of Michigan associate professor who uses machine learning and satellite data to study how small farmers are adapting to climate change, and Mayank Kejriwal, who uses AI to investigate online sex trafficking at the University of Southern California. In addition to organizing the prize ceremony, Bisgrove matched each winner with researchers at ASU who thought about similar topics.

“Pulling together their visit agendas was a fantastic reminder of how huge and amazing ASU is,” Bisgrove reflects. “I learned that ASU is one of only a handful of places in the country that has an Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research, which does incredible work.”

Though Bisgrove started his PhD set on working in zoos, his experience as conference program manager has made him seriously consider widening his trajectory.

“It’s made me much more interested in how universities function as institutions, and how partnerships are formed and managed effectively. So, it’s been a great experience. I’m excited to do more of it until I finish my PhD, and who knows what happens after that,” he laughs.

But after the conference was over, Bisgrove only one had goal on his mind: “I’m going to hang out with my dogs on the couch and sleep.”