College of Global Futures
Center for Science and the Imagination
Center for Science and the Imagination
Learn more about your impact
Imagination is fundamental to our ability to understand the world around us, identify challenges and their causes and respond constructively in ways that create a more positive future. In a moment of acute global challenges, perhaps the greatest crisis facing our world is that so few people feel empowered to imagine better futures for themselves and their communities, and to devise strategies to bring those futures into being.
This fund will support our work in creating inspiring, inclusive visions of the future, grounded in scientific, technical and social realities and informed by cutting-edge research. We provide opportunities for people not just to imagine for themselves, but to imagine collaboratively, harnessing the human powers of improvisation, conversation, design and play. Our projects range from books of science fiction and nonfiction to podcasts and short films, as well as efforts to support educators in bringing hopeful futures into learning environments for K-12 students and lifelong learners. Imagination is essential to transition, and we are supporting people who are designing their futures at crucial junctures in their lives, like military veterans returning to civilian life and recent college graduates.
I’ve been associated with CSI for more than a decade, and the amazing profusion of transformative events and publications that has come out of the center results directly from the creativity, energy and expertise of the people who have been running it from the start. They practice their name: imagination has been backed by science, and is infused with science, such that they are leading the way in the kind of thinking we need now to deal with all the many challenges of this century."
Impact of donor support
- The Center for Science and the Imagination has received more than 26 grants totaling more than $22 million to support projects exploring possible futures at the intersection of science, technology and culture.
- We have worked with top organizations across a wide range of fields, from the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NASA, the World Bank, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Flinn Foundation, and Intel Corporation.
- We have published more than 200 original speculative fiction stories and more than 30 books that combine compelling works of fiction with essays from top thinkers in fields ranging from engineering and literature to computer science, history and public health.
- Our fiction stories have received top prizes like the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and our books have been included in “Best of” lists by The New York Times, Locus Magazine and Yale Climate Connections.
- Students who have worked at our center have gone on to pursue careers as leaders and innovators in fields including journalism, animation, artificial intelligence, economic development and waste management.
