Broader Impact Examples

Broader impacts can integrate one or multiple “cords” of research, education and outreach, and access activities. Each societal outcome below is mapped to the cords it draws on, with examples of the impact that results.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
No	Yes	Yes	Populate a nationally accessible learning hub that hosts courses and learning modules for interactive data analysis and modeling tools for formal classroom active learning, training workshops, and hands-on tutorials.
Yes	Yes	No	Use a new instrument in a new, graduate-level imaging course to teach next-generation life scientists advanced imaging techniques and image analysis software.
No	Yes	Yes	Collaborate with STEM outreach coordinators to conduct a summer outreach camp with students recruited from three campuses of the STEM-focused charter Purdue Polytechnic High Schools whose student body is nearly 70% black.
No	Yes	Yes	Budget to recruit diverse undergraduate researchers in partnership with the College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Experience that provides a best practice cohort experience while engaging URM undergraduates in project laboratory research.
No	Yes	Yes	Create images and videos using the SDC microscope for use by secondary biology teachers to demonstrate organelles cell structures that are typically poorly represented in biology courses. Indiana Department of Education posts images and videos online for high school accessibility.
No	Yes	Yes	Partner with Purdue Science K-12 Outreach coordinator expertise to budget two high school teachers who will have a research experience and also create a suite of 2D visualizations, 3D animations, and virtual reality experiences for use by biology teachers and hosted on globally accessible nanoHUB. Teachers recruited from school corporations with high percentage URM students.
No	Yes	No	Leverage the Purdue Gifted Education Resource Institute to develop, deliver, and assess an introduction to epigenetics summer course that will target STEM educational enrichment for gifted youth and help address the educational relevance gap between basic biology concepts and application to real-life topics.
Yes	No	No	Deliver a transferable and scalable educational model for how elementary science teacher preparation in higher education can address next-generation science and engineering standards.
No	Yes	Yes	Collaborate with Purdue Physics Outreach Coordinator and local (including rural) high school and middle school teachers to design and develop an inquiry-based, interactive instructional biomedical physics unit for grades 7-12 to teach students motility imaging of live cells and contribute new instructional guides.
Yes	Yes	No	Develop a Summer Research Opportunity Program (a graduate studies research experience) on topics including the motility image of 2D samples to correct with the 3D motility of tissue.
Yes	Yes	No	Mentor a broad cohort of undergraduates from Purdue’s VIP program, which focuses on analyzing the open-source code scientific software supply chain.
Yes	Yes	No	Drawing on the Engineering-in-Medicine Institute, we will launch a four-course micro-credential, co-listed across disciplines and partner institutions, that will include informal lectures and biweekly joint seminars to enhance trainees’ exposure to interdisciplinary clinical and engineering research environments.
Yes	Yes	No	Integrate digital twin modules into course-based undergraduate research experiences that will expose students to real-world interdisciplinary challenges and an opportunity to work collaboratively with students from the project’s partner institution through structured cross-institutional team projects and virtual seminars.
No	Yes	No	Establish a vertically integrated Digital Twins Studio, a multi-level interdisciplinary research training environment engaging high school, undergraduate, and graduate students in three-week summer projects.
No	No	Yes	Develop a new nanoart module for STEM summer workshops that will teach students how to transform black-and-white SEM images into scientific artwork. A dedicated website and national nanoart competition will create a global nanoart community.
No	Yes	Yes	Develop a battery design demo kit tailored for K-12 students and present it at public outreach events with hands-on demos, as well as at local elementary schools. The level of scientific explanation and the complexity of hypothesis generation and battery design will be tailored to students’ age group and knowledge level.
Yes	Yes	No	Collaborate with Purdue College of Science’s AP Fridays to develop an electrochemistry laboratory activity for high school advanced placement curriculum that ties into fundamental concepts and incorporates a research and design component.
Yes	Yes	No	Host a Hackathon weekend for undergraduate students where teams tackle real-world challenges and develop solutions to make digital agriculture more accessible, user-friendly, and adaptable for farmers.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
Yes	Yes	No	Hold virtual town hall meetings to disseminate knowledge and solicit stakeholder and community feedback.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Hold virtual town hall meetings with rural and urban stakeholders to disseminate knowledge and solicit stakeholder and community feedback
No	Yes	Yes	Participate in Purdue NanoDays to inform the public and K-12 students about size, localization, and dynamics of proteins, cytoskeletal filaments, and cellular organelles through posters, videos, and structural protein models.
No	Yes	Yes	Partner with Purdue College of Science K-12 Outreach to offer a summer, four-day GLOBE data science training opportunity for middle and high school math and science teachers recruited from regional rural and inner-city school districts. The international NASA-funded Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program is a citizen science online community that allows worldwide participation in data collection related to the Earth system and global environment
Yes	Yes	No	Mentor graduate students in communicating to non-expert audience and sponsor a Science on Tap community event.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Develop a freely available platform (tools, maps) that allows citizen scientists to contribute to the collection and analysis of project data.
No	Yes	Yes	Design and implement interactive demonstrations at the Purdue Spring Fest, a free regional event that attracts more than 30,000 attendees annually.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Lead an interactive course on plant biomechanics at Purdue University Grandparents University that brings 1,000 grandparents and grandchildren aged 7-14 to campus for two days over the summer to participate in hands-on classes in a major of their choice.
No	Yes	Yes	Create an international science-as-art competition, NanoArtography, to promote nanoscience outside research laboratories and connect students across science, engineering, and art backgrounds.
No	Yes	Yes	Collaborate with Purdue College of Agriculture Extension to host a booth at the Indiana State Fair with a hands-on demonstration on drinking water treatment to facilitate conversations about drinking water safety, treatment, pathogens, biofilms, and bioenvironmental engineering.
No	Yes	Yes	Host an interactive “ID your favorite rock” booth among farmer’s markets at each partner institution’s home state 2-3 times per season, with an expected reach of at least 100 people per table.
No	Yes	Yes	Establish a science festival to bring live and digital science programming to broad public audiences.
No	Yes	Yes	Develop an interactive website and mobile app to engage thousands of users across the U.S.
No	Yes	Yes	Launch a 12-part podcast series to reach audiences of civic, business, and community leaders, and college students to spark a national discussion.
No	Yes	Yes	Create six educational YouTube videos, including four whiteboard animated videos and at least two interviews with scientific experts, that educate the general public on the project research and spark conversations on conversational AI agency for character virtues.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
Yes	No	No	Develop novel mass spectrometer that impacts water safety of communities as it allows researchers to: (a) identify metabolic changes from exposure to environmental contaminants, (b) detect contaminants in soil, water, and air samples, (c) measure contaminant levels in humans, and (d) identify biomarkers linked to adverse health outcomes.
Yes	No	No	Develop a machine learning model to predict lateral movement during Christchurch earthquake that led to soil liquefaction. Insights will accelerate disaster resilience, inform codes for the built environment, and improve community safety.
Yes	No	Yes	Develop a smart and connected mobility platform to determine spatio-temporal dynamics of households that impact sustainable transportation solutions in economically disparate communities.
No	Yes	Yes	Create an Algorithmic Economics toolkit for training computer science students how to incorporate fairness and equity constraints
Yes	No	No	Create new cyber-physical infrastructure to enable distributed manufacturing; thus, reducing impact of pharmaceutical wastes on the environment and human health by eliminating disposal to land/waster systems and facilitating the move to more socially conscious circular manufacturing.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Co-produce research and advance market development along the agricultural value chain in the Midwest to identify and address social, economic, agronomic, and environmental barriers to adopting diverse sustainable agricultural systems in economically disadvantaged rural areas.
Yes	No	No	Develop and refine an algorithm that powers a visualization tool for the construction industry that improves the safety of underground excavation and construction sites.
Yes	No	Yes	Develop noninvasive wearable sensors that continuously track key metabolic biomarkers. The technology emphasizes affordability and scalability to support widespread clinical and consumer adoption.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Translate scientific research into actionable, evidence-based online resources (playbooks, weekly tips) that help parents and educators support children’s well-being.
Yes	No	Yes	Develop a virtual reality tool to incorporate hands-on components in virtual food safety training with topics in on-farm food safety management and value-added processing.
No	Yes	Yes	Develop a free, self-paced online YouTube course that explores the foundations of building AI conversation agents for character virtues.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
No	Yes	Yes	Prepare senior undergraduates to join industry or national lab collaborators for summer sponsored data science research internships with virtual co-mentoring with faculty and industry mentors. For professional development in communicating to non-experts, interns will have a research poster presentation in Hillenbrand residence hall, site of the diverse 800-member Data Mine interdisciplinary undergraduate learning community, to further engage undergraduate students.
No	Yes	No	Prepare graduate students for the annual 3MT (Three Minute Thesis research communication competition) sponsored campus-wide by the Purdue University Graduate School as dynamic opportunities for graduate students to gain communication skills with non-expert audiences.
No	Yes	No	Co-mentor graduate fellows on cross-institutional research projects that include industrial practitioner members for intrapreneurial thinking (entrepreneurial within companies) in the context of systems-level research.
No	Yes	No	Inform businesses regarding how to integrate the GMA approach to data visualization into practice to increase worker performance and business competitiveness.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Develop and test an educational intervention that supports improved multi-cultural collaboration for undergraduate engineering students.
No	Yes	Yes	Train project graduate students, postdocs, and researchers on “inclusive science communication” and share results with a diverse array of formal and informal audiences.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Conduct interactive workshop at project outset to build center-wide awareness of effective teaming processes across diverse team composition and discuss impact on scientific discovery and translation of innovations. Annual meetings will assess teaming success and challenges and re- re-alignment to best practices.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
Yes	No	No	Conduct two-week scholar exchanges of pre-tenure, U.S.-based researchers to collaborate with international network members allow early-career scholars to gain exposure and deepen global partnerships
Yes	Yes	Yes	Develop testbed for novel networking strategies that grow wider set of researchers and provides transferable best practices to other fields
No	Yes	No	Build upon existing partnerships with national labs to expose trainees to environments outside US academia and disseminate project findings. Trainees will regularly visit national labs to perform fundamental experiments related to dissertations and publish joint papers.
No	Yes	Yes	Develop a capstone project opportunity where diverse senior students—recruited with assistance from the Women in Technology Learning Community—apply project design methods and present as teams to industrial representatives at the Indiana Manufacturing Competitiveness Center meeting.
Yes	No	No	Establish a Center for Laser and Plasma Manufacturing that brings together multidisciplinary experts in academia, industry, and government in a collaborative venture to transition fundamental research discoveries to novel, commercial-ready technologies.
No	Yes	Yes	Facilitate communication and interdisciplinary access among researchers with a website, cultevol(dot)net, that includes a comprehensive bibliography and a catalog of available resources for the study of cultural evolution.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
Yes	Yes	No	Produce novel chemical separation and process research for new hydrocarbon energy sources that increase U.S. energy self-sufficiency
Yes	Yes	Yes	Create learning activities for high school cybersecurity camp to increase interest in cybersecurity career paths and access in the cybersecurity workforce.
Yes	No	No	Use machine learning to develop a unified distribution alignment and translation framework relevant to real-world applications including, defense, precision agriculture, e-commerce, and medicine.
Yes	No	No	Develop an AI-enabled process for designing and discovering new high strength aluminum alloys that demonstrate improved performance in extreme conditions, including hypersonics.
No	Yes	Yes	Partner with the DoD-funded military deployment research center to provide mental health education resources (in person/online) to National Guard service members and their families.
Yes	No	No	Enhance metal recovery from batteries in End-of-Life (EOL) electronics to increase sustainable access to rare earth elements.
Yes	No	No	Develop a concrete plan to secure the research software supply chain (RSSC), which is critical infrastructure for the scientific enterprise and enables the U.S. research ecosystem to pursue scientific breakthroughs while maintaining control over knowledge and technologies.
Yes	No	No	Develop a better understanding of memorization mechanisms in AI models to create AI models that are less susceptible to privacy violations, overfitting, and adversarial attacks.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
Yes	No	No	Produce creative process designs that eliminate energy- and capital-intensive cryogenic separation steps associated with current technologies and deliver cost-competitive transportation fuels at greater than a 25% reduction in capital expenditure versus the benchmark technology.
No	Yes	No	Develop a three-credit course to introduce graduate students to the intellectual, financial, leadership, and management processes for translating research into tangible products in a commercialization pathway.
No	Yes	No	Conduct panel sessions highlighting entrepreneurship training resources at the Purdue Foundry and Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship to prepare interested trainees for NSF I-Corps participation.
Yes	No	No	Generate novel capabilities for the additive manufacturing (AM) industry to mass produce ultra-high strength alloys for a wide range of technological applications including critical medical equipment that is currently produced abroad.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Create rural community-based applied math curriculum for a middle school level to associate degree continuum that shifts perception of advanced manufacturing career paths and develops advanced STEM skills in digital and robotic tools and technology as well as critical thinking.
Yes	No	No	Develop sensor technology that enables early detection and mitigation of stressors, such as insect pests and diseases, to boost crop yields and minimize losses.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
Yes	No	No	Integrate analysis tools and the underlying databases so that economic policy makers can factor in potential impacts on biodiversity and natural ecosystems.
Yes	No	No	Collaborate with External Advisory Board members to repeat an inaugural national Conference on the Long Run Sustainability of U.S. Agriculture at the National Press Club to again engage policymakers, industry leaders, NGOs, and academics on sustainability of agriculture from a local and global perspective and integrate project research results.
Yes	Yes	No	Hold workshops and symposia that inform forest managers, policymakers, and other stakeholders on how to improve ecosystem services via improved management of tree and fungal diversity using the advances developed in the project.
Yes	Yes	No	Engage agricultural producers and advisers through a “co-production” strategy to define climate-optimal systems and to understand stakeholder needs for information related to alternative agricultural systems. Partner with Extension to develop a decision support tool and train-the-trainer sessions to extend the project’s impact beyond the initial funding period.
Yes	Yes	Yes	Develop a socio-technical model that allows communities and policy makers to evaluate the structural vulnerability of buildings and develop an integrated scheme for retrofit prioritization.

Research	Education and Outreach	Access	Example impact
Yes	Yes	Yes	Develop the NCN Cyber Platform (nanoHUB) to allow users to discover content easily and rapidly, deploy new science seamlessly; reach and retain a large community of experimentalists, educators, and researchers; and advance the field of science gateways. Work on nanoHUB will also broadly impact approximately 60 other major scientific communities that utilize the HUBzero technology.
Yes	Yes	No	Develop the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation for sharing complementary facilities, establishing standards and protocols to enable cyberinfrastructure linkages, and training next generation earthquake engineers.
Yes	Yes	No	Develop Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation that provides a 3D visualization and virtual reality theater that uses advanced simulation techniques and high-performance computing for experiential learning and training.
No	Yes	No	Develop a “Science Express” program making scientific instrumentation available for loan to K-12 students and teachers; thereby, creating opportunities for teachers and students to learn the theory and practice associated with scientific instrumentation.

Questions?

Contact us at OORIntake@purdue.edu.