Speakers
Aishani Aatresh
Undergraduate STS FellowHarvard College
Aishani Aatresh is in the class of 2024 at Harvard College pursuing a degree of her own design, Complex Biosocial Systems, embedded within the Program on Science, Technology and Society and the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is interested in the construction of problems of preparedness and innovation in human health with respect to questions of democratic governance, institutional responsibility, and social order; she particularly focuses on infectious disease surveillance, testing, and modeling for COVID-19, antibiotic resistance, and viral discovery. Aishani is a Fellow in the STS Program and generally spearheads undergraduate-facing STS initiatives beyond the classroom, co-chairing the inaugural STS Undergraduate Fellowship this year.
Marc Aidinoff
Chief of StaffOffice of Science and Technology Policy
Dr. Marc Aidinoff is OSTP’s Chief of Staff since Fall 2021. An experienced science and technology policy expert trained in history and STS, Dr. Aidinoff’s work has centered on the intertwined relationship between technology policy and social policy. Prior to joining OSTP, he worked in data analytics and as a teacher with Freedom Summer Collegiate. During the Obama-Biden Administration, Aidinoff served as the Assistant Director for Domestic and Economic Policy to then-Vice President Biden from 2013 to 2015. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Anna Agathangelou
ProfessorYork University
Professor Agathangelou teaches in the areas of international relations and women and politics. Some of her areas of expertise are time and temporality in global politics, the body, time and ecology, international feminist political economy and feminist/postcolonial and decolonial thought. She is the co-director of Global Change Institute, Cyprus and was a visiting fellow in the Program of Science, Technology and Society at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard (2014-2015). She is currently involved on two multinational SSHRC partnership research projects focusing on sexual violence and human security, global governance, and biotechnology. She has researched ethnic conflict in Cyprus, as well as reconstruction in post-conflict societies with a focus on sexual violence, displaced peoples and the missing.
Aziza Ahmed
ProfessorBoston University School of Law
Aziza Ahmed’s scholarship examines the intersection of law, politics, and science in the fields of constitutional law, criminal law, health law, and family law. She will be teaching the International Human Rights Seminar and a Reproductive Rights course this fall. Before joining Boston University School of Law, Ahmed was professor of law at University of California, Irvine School of Law. She also taught at Northeastern University School of Law. She has served as visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Bennett Boskey Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, visiting scholar at the Harvard Law School Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, and Law and public affairs fellow at Princeton University. Professor Ahmed’s scholarship has appeared in journals including University of Miami Law Review, American Journal of Law and Medicine, Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, Boston University Law Review, and American Journal of International Law.
Saptarishi Bandopadhyay
Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law SchoolYork University
Saptarishi Bandopadhyay is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He is a research Fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University and a Senior Fellow at Melbourne University Law School. Saptarishi holds an SJD (doctorate) from Harvard University, LLMs from Harvard Law School and American University’s Washington College of Law, and a BALLB (hons) from the National University of Juridical Sciences, India. Saptarishi has received awards and fellowships from the Canadian Social Sciences and Research Council, the American Society for Legal History, the American Society for Environmental History, the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, and Brown University. Saptarishi’s writing has appeared in encyclopedias, edited volumes, and in legal and interdisciplinary journals. His first book, All Is Well: Catastrophe and the Making of the Normal State was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. He tweets @saptarishi_b
Nicole Bassoff
PhD Student, Public PolicyHarvard University
Nicole West Bassoff is a PhD student in Public Policy and STS at Harvard Kennedy School and one of the organizers of the Graduate Research in STS (GRiSTS) Conference. She is interested broadly in interrogating the expert understandings of publics and public good that motivate technocratic forms of governance.
Prior to starting her PhD at Harvard, Nicole was awarded a Wellcome Trust master’s studentship to pursue an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation explored the promissory rhetorics of publicly-funded genomic science projects in the U.S. She holds a BA from Harvard in History and Science.
Pablo Boczkowski
Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor, Department of Communication StudiesNorthwestern University
Pablo J. Boczkowski (he / él) is Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He is Founder and Director of the Center for Latinx Digital Media, and Faculty Director of the Master of Science in Leadership for Creative Enterprises program, both at Northwestern, and Co-Founder and Co- Director of the Center for the Study of Media and Society in Argentina, a joint initiative between Northwestern and Universidad de San Andrés, in Buenos Aires. He is Fellow of the International Communication Association. His research program examines the dynamics of digital culture from a comparative perspective. He is the author of six books, four edited volumes, and more than sixty journal articles. Three of his books were published in 2021: Abundance: On the Experience of Living in a World of Information Plenty (Oxford University Press), The Digital Environment: How We Live, Learn, Work, and Play Now (with Eugenia Mitchelstein, MIT Press) and The Journalism Manifesto (with Barbie Zelizer and Chris Anderson, Polity). In 2022 he received the Best Book Award from the Ethnography Division of the National Communication for Abundance; was named co-winner of the Public Sociology Award from the Communication, Information Technologies and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association for The Digital Environment and the related articles on Infobae; and was elected Chair of the Fellows of the International Communication Association. New books forthcoming in 2023 include To Know Is To Compare: Studying Social Media Across Nations, Media and Platforms (with Mora Matassi,, MIT Press), and Digital Journalism in Latin America (with Eugenia Mitchelstein, Routledge). He is currently writing The Patina of Distrust: Misinformation in a Context of Generalized Skepticism (with Eugenia Mitchelstein, Facundo Suenzo, and María Celeste Wagner). He writes regularly for Infobae América, and Revista Anfibia . Last but not least, he is an unfailing —and often heartbroken—supporter of San Lorenzo de Almagro
Michael Bravo
Professor of the History and Geography of ScienceUniversity of Cambridge
Michael Bravo is Professor of the History and Geography of Science, University of Cambridge, and Hugh Brammer Fellow in Geography at Downing College. He has served two terms as Acting Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute. He directs the Circumpolar History and Public Policy Research Group, and is Co-Director of the Arctic Humanities Workshop, a collaboration between Cambridge and Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. Michael has also held a Professor II appointment at the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø (2014-17). Michael read for a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge. His books include Narrating the Arctic (2002,) Arctic Geopolitics and Autonomy (2011) and most recently, North Pole: Nature and Culture (2019). Michael’s work has been widely featured by the media in programmes such as BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, Radio 4’s Daughters of the Snow, and BBC World Service’s The Forum.
Neil Brenner
Lucy Flower Professor of Urban SociologyUniversity of Chicago
Neil Brenner is Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology and Chair of the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU) at the University of Chicago. His books include New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question (Oxford, 2019); New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood (Oxford, 2004) and the edited volume, Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization (Jovis, 2014). With his collaborators in the Urban Theory Lab, Brenner contributed a project to last year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture titled Data-Spheres of Planetary Urbanization. His work explores the connections between capitalist urbanization and the remaking of political ecologies beyond the city, from the microbiological to the planetary scales.
Craig Calhoun
University Professor of Social SciencesArizona State University
Craig Calhoun is University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University and
Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he was
previously Director. He has also been President of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), founder of the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, and a professor there and at UNC-Chapel Hill, Columbia, Oslo, and Princeton.
Calhoun’s newest book is Degenerations of Democracy (Harvard 2022, co-authored with Dilip
Gaonkar and Charles Taylor). He has also recently edited The Green New Deal and the Future of Work (Columbia 2022, with Benjamin Fong).
Cathryn Carson
Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of ScienceUniversity of California, Berkeley
Cathryn Carson is Professor and Chair of the Department of History, UC Berkeley, and Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee for Berkeley’s Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society (CSTMS). By training a historian of the natural sciences, she has published on the philosophical, cultural, and political history of twentieth-century physics; the integration of social scientific and humanistic perspectives into engineering education; Heideggerian philosophy of science and technology; and the organization and management of research universities. Her books include Heisenberg in the Atomic Age, Reappraising Oppenheimer, Weimar Culture and Quantum Mechanics, and Reflections on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident. A former Associate Dean of the Division of Social Sciences at Berkeley, she is the founding director of D-Lab, Berkeley’s social science data laboratory, and the initial Faculty Lead of Berkeley’s undergraduate Data Science program. She subsequently chaired the Faculty Advisory Board of the campus-wide Data Science Planning Initiative, which articulated Berkeley’s commitment to the integration of all aspects of data science (technical foundations, interdisciplinary applications, and social/ethical implications) and developed the blueprint for Berkeley’s new Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS). A graduate of the University of Chicago, Professor Carson was trained in physics before receiving her PhD in History of Science from Harvard University. She is deeply invested in undergraduate education across disciplinary divides, exemplified by the thousand-plus students who this year will take her class on the Human Contexts and Ethics of Data, cross-listed across Data Science, History, and STS.
Ash Carter
In MemoriamDirector of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Harvard Kennedy School
Ash Carter is a former United States Secretary of Defense and the current Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, where he leads the Technology and Public Purpose project. He is also an Innovation Fellow and Corporation Member at MIT.
For over 35 years, Secretary Carter has leveraged his experience in national security, technology, and innovation to defend the United States and make a better world. He has done so under presidents of both political parties as well as in the private sector. Most recently, he served as Secretary of Defense and before that in the number two (“COO”) and number three (“weapons czar”) positions. He was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Department’s highest civilian honor, on five separate occasions.
As Secretary of Defense from 2015 to 2017, he pushed the Pentagon to “think outside its five-sided box.” He led the creation of the military campaign and international coalition to destroy ISIS, designed and executed the strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific, established a new playbook for the U.S. and NATO to confront Russia’s aggression, and launched a national cyber strategy.
Secretary Carter spearheaded new technological capabilities and a more agile approach to the relationship between the Pentagon and the tech sector. He also transformed the way the Department of Defense recruits, trains, and retains quality people, including opening all military positions to women without exception.
He earned a BA from Yale University and a PhD in theoretical physics from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Chung Hon Michael Cheng
Composer and JD CandidateHarvard Law School
Chung Hon Michael Cheng (b. 1997) is an award-winning composer born in Hong Kong. His teachers have included Robert Kyr, Ann Rivers Witherspoon, and John and Nancy Weems.
His compositions have been performed across the United States and internationally, including before audiences of over 30,000 and such dignitaries as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. He also is a Diploma awardee and finalist of the 2022 International J. S. Bach Piano Competition in Saarbrücken, Germany.
Cheng began studying piano at age four and composing on his own at age five. He is the two-time United States national winner of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Composition Competition (Junior, 2012; Young Artist, 2021), as well as two-time national runner-up of the same (Junior, 2011; Senior, 2014). He has also won numerous other national and international awards in composition, and his music has been featured on the United States Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
In 2019, Cheng graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Physics magna cum laude, an M.S. in Engineering Sciences, and a minor in Economics. He then earned an M.S. at MIT and returned to Harvard for his J.D. in 2021.
George Church
Robert Winthrop Professor of GeneticsHarvard Medical School
George Church is Professor at Harvard & MIT, co-author of 625 papers, 156 patent publications & the book Regenesis. He developed methods used for the first genome sequence (1994) & genome recoding & million-fold cost reductions since. He co-initiated the BRAIN Initiative (2011) & Genome Projects (1984, 2005) to provide & interpret world’s only open-access personal precision medicine data.
I. Glenn Cohen
James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of LawHarvard Law School
Prof. Cohen is one of the world’s leading experts on the intersection of bioethics (sometimes also called “medical ethics”) and the law, as well as health law. He also teaches civil procedure. Prof. Cohen’s current projects relate to big data, medical AI, health information technologies, mobile health, reproduction/reproductive technology, research ethics, organ transplantation, rationing in law and medicine, health policy, FDA law, COVID-19, translational medicine, and to medical tourism – the travel of patients who are residents of one country, the “home country,” to another country, the “destination country,” for medical treatment. He is the author of more than 200 articles and chapters and his award-winning work has appeared in leading legal (including the Stanford, Cornell, and Southern California Law Reviews), medical (including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA), bioethics (including the American Journal of Bioethics, the Hastings Center Report), scientific (Science, Cell, Nature Reviews Genetics) and public health (the American Journal of Public Health) journals, as well as Op-Eds in the New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, Time Magazine, and other venues.
Austin Clyde
Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science, University of ChicagoAustin Clyde is an assistant computational scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science. Previously, he was a visiting research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Science, Technology, and Society. His research interests include AI for science, the social impacts of computing and technology, and the role of rights in the digital age.
Michael Crow
PresidentArizona State University
Michael M. Crow is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader. He became the sixteenth president of Arizona State University in July 2002 and has spearheaded ASU’s rapid and groundbreaking transformative evolution into one of the world’s best public metropolitan research universities. As a model “New American University,” ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the United States, and consequential societal impact.
Lauded as the ”#1 most innovative” school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for eight straight years, ASU is a student-centric, technology-enabled university focused on global challenges. Under Crow’s leadership, ASU has established more than twenty-five new transdisciplinary schools, including the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and launched trailblazing multidisciplinary initiatives including the Biodesign Institute, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, and important initiatives in the humanities and social sciences.
George Daley
DeanHarvard Medical School
George Q. Daley, MD, PhD, is the dean of Harvard Medical School and the Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine. A physician-scientist and an authority on stem cell science and cancer biology, his discoveries have twice been cited in Science magazine’s Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year. He has co-authored international guidelines for the conduct and clinical translation of stem cell research and regenerative medicine and for ethical oversight of emerging biotechnologies. Daley’s priorities as dean of HMS include fostering innovative biomedical, computational and health care policy research, building a pipeline of novel therapeutics founded on basic science, nurturing the next generation of physician-scientists and advancing diversity in science, technology, engineering and medicine. Daley earned his AB and MD degrees from Harvard and a PhD in biology from MIT, and has worked as a trainee, fellow and staff physician at several HMS-affiliated hospitals.
Diane Davis
Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and UrbanismHarvard University
Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Development and Urbanism and former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). Before moving to the GSD in 2011, Davis served as the head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where she also was Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. Trained as a sociologist (BA in Sociology & Geography, Northwestern University; Ph.D. in Sociology, UCLA) Davis teaches courses on the spatial structure, social composition, and governance of cities, with a special focus on risk governance. Author of Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century and other books on the relationship between urbanization and development, her current research engages questions of environmental sustainability at the urban and regional scales. Recent projects on mobility, sustainability, and urban environmental governance have been funded by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations, the UK-Mexico Climate Change Pact, and the Toronto-based Urban Economy Forum. In April 2019 she was named one of top 50 women in research on transport by the German Development Agency’s Transforming Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI). Related publications include: Transforming Urban Transport (Oxford University Press, 2018); “New Mobility Paradigms and the Equity Question.” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America (2021); The Future of Streets” (with Andres Sevstuk) in Luca Acci (ed.), Mathematics of Urban Morphology (Springer/Birkhauser Publishers, 2019); “Governance Capacity and the Smart Mobility Transition” in Greg Marsden and Louise Reardon (eds.), Governing the Smart Mobility Transition (Elsevier, 2018); “Expanding the Scope of Sustainability Planning: Lessons from Stockholm’s Congestion Charging Policy” (with Amy Rader Olsson). Urban Planning (2017)”; and most recently, ““Collective Consumption and Urban Complexity: Food Governance Innovations in the Anthropocene” (with Taylor Davey), in a Special Issue on Complex Resilience and Sustainability: Transdisciplinary Perspectives edited by Gerardo del Cerro for the Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering and Science (2022).
Bill de Blasio
Former MayorNew York City
Bill de Blasio served as the 109th mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New York City Public Advocate from 2010 to 2013 and started his career as an elected official on the New York City Council, representing the 39th district in Brooklyn from 2002 to 2009. Prior to being an elected official, de Blasio served as the campaign manager for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s successful senatorial campaign of 2000 and got his start in NYC government working for Mayor David Dinkins.
Pierre Delvenne
Director, Spiral Research Center; Department of Political ScienceUniversité de Liège
Pierre Delvenne is a Senior Research Associate of the Fonds de la recherche scientifique (FNRS) and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Liège, where he heads the Spiral Research Center and the Interdisciplinary Research Unit Cité. His research lies at the intersection of science and technology studies and political economy and focuses on the multifaceted struggles within political and cultural economies of science, technology, and innovation. Previously he was a visiting Research Fellow at the University of Vienna, King’s College London, Harvard University, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Universidad de Buenos Aires and University of Westminster. Pierre is also a founding member of the Belgian Network for Science and Technology in Society Studies (BSTS) and a member of the Junior Council of the Science and Democracy Network (SDN).
Rafal Dutkiewicz
Former MayorWrocław, Poland
Born in 1959 in Mikstat, Dutkiewicz is a politician, businessman, academic lecturer, “Solidarity” activist, and four-time elected Mayor of Wrocław (the capital of Lower Silesia region) from 2002 to 2018. He holds a MSc degree in Applied Mathematics and a PhD in formal logics.
Under his leadership, Wrocław attracted investments from more than 200 Polish and international companies representing the most modern sectors of production and services which led to a steady growth of the GDP per capita, more than 10% annually. Overall, in the last 16 years the city budget has tripled and GDP per capita has doubled. According to Eurostat, in 2018/19 Wroclaw was the third largest European city in terms of economic growth. During Dutkiewicz’s mayorship Wrocław became an international city with over 200.000 foreigners from 124 countries. Wrocław co-hosted UEFA Euro 2012 Football Championship, in 2016 became the European Capital of Culture, in 2017 hosted the World Games and in 2018 was chosen the European Best Destination and since 2011 hosts the first Academia Europaea Knowledge Hub.
Doug Elmendorf
DeanHarvard Kennedy School
Doug Elmendorf has been dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School since 2016. He had been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution after serving as the director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2009 through March 2015. He had previously been a senior fellow at Brookings, assistant director of the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board, deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, and an assistant professor at Harvard University. In those policy roles, Doug worked on budget policy, health care issues, the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy, Social Security, income security programs, financial markets, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, and a range of other topics. He earned his PhD and AM in economics from Harvard University and his AB summa cum laude from Princeton University.
Michael Evans
Undergraduate STS FellowHarvard College
Michael Evans is a science fiction author, Harvard student, and the CEO and co-founder of the publishing technology start-up Ream. He’s published 12 science fiction novels including World Gone Mad and Breakdown and is the author of the forthcoming nonfiction book Creator Economy for Authors. At Harvard, he is in his third year of study and is a member of the Program on Science, Technology, and Society as co-editor of Future Humans and one of the organizers of the undergraduate fellowship. He’s interested in how storytelling shapes our futures and is from Charleston, South Carolina.
Ulrike Felt
Head, Department of Science and Technology StudiesUniversity of Vienna
Ulrike Felt is full professor and head of the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the University of Vienna. Her research centers on two wider areas: governance, democracy and public engagement around technoscientific developments and changing research cultures. Across both areas Ulrike is specifically interested in the role of temporalities, valuation practices as well as changes due to the growing importance of digital practices. She is mainly working with qualitative methods and actively engages in developing more participatory and inclusive methodological approaches to matters of concern. From 2002-2007 she has been editor of the journal Science, Technology and Human Values. Her most recent books include the “Handbook of Science and Technology Studies” (2017, MIT Press) and “Exploring Science Communication. A Science and Technology Studies Approach” (together with Sarah Davies, 2020, SAGE). From 2017-2021 she has been president of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST). She is elected member of the Academia Europaea since 2019. In 2022 she has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant on “Innovation residues.”
Cole French
UndergraduateHarvard College
Cole French is a senior at Harvard College studying Computer Science, with a focus on the future of machine learning. In his free time, he enjoys playing chess and tennis and writing poetry and satire.
Maarten Hajer
Head, Department of Science and Technology StudiesUniversity of Vienna
Maarten Hajer (1962) is distinguished professor of Urban Futures at Utrecht University and director of the Urban Futures Studio. Hajer holds MA degrees in Political Science and in Urban & Regional Planning from the University of Amsterdam and a D.Phil. in Politics from the University of Oxford. Hajer is the author of seventeen authored or edited books and many peer-reviewed articles and contributions to books including The Politics of Environmental Discourse (Oxford UP, 1995) and Authoritative Governance: Policy Making in the Age of Mediatization (Oxford UP, 2009). On urban issues he recently published Smart about Cities – Visualizing the Challenge of 21st Century Urbanism (NAi/010, 2014) and Neighborhoods for the Future – A Plea for a Social and Ecological Urbanism (co-authored at Trancity/Valiz, 2020). He is now working on a book on ‘The Future of Environmental Politics’ commissioned by Oxford University Press.
From 2008 to 2015 he was Director-General of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), the prime advisor to the Dutch Cabinet on issues of urban planning and land use, climate change and biodiversity. Hajer is a member of the UN’s International Resource Panel (IRP, hosted by UNEP since 2011) for which he led the report The Weight of Cities – Resource Requirements of Future Urbanisation (2018) together with Mark Swilling. In 2016 he was Chief Curator of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR).
Stefan Helmreich
Elting E. Morison Professor of AnthropologyMIT
Stefan Helmreich is Elting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology at MIT. He is author of Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas (California, 2009) and Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond (Princeton, 2016). His essays have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Representations, American Anthropologist, The Wire, Cabinet, Public Culture, and BOMB.
Stephen Hilgartner
Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Science & Technology StudiesCornell University
Stephen Hilgartner studies the social dimensions and politics of contemporary and emerging science and technology, especially in the life sciences. His research focuses on situations in which scientific knowledge is implicated in establishing, contesting, and maintaining social order — a theme he has examined in studies of expertise, property formation, risk disputes, and biotechnology. His most recent book, Reordering Life: Knowledge and Control in the Genomics Revolution (MIT Press, 2017), examines how new knowledge and new regimes of control took shape during the Human Genome Project. Hilgartner’s book on science advice—Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama—won the Rachel Carson Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science. He is also a co-editor of two recent books: Science & Democracy: Making Knowledge and Making Power in the Biosciences and Beyond (Routledge, 2015) and Handbook of Genomics, Health and Society (Routledge, 2018). Hilgartner is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
J. Benjamin Hurlbut
Associate Professor, School of Life SciencesArizona State University
J. Benjamin Hurlbut is Associate Professor of Biology and Society in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. He is trained in Science and Technology Studies with a focus on the history of the modern biomedical and life sciences. Hurlbut studies the changing relationships between science, politics and law in the governance of biomedical research and innovation, examining the interplay of science and technology with notions of democracy, religious and moral pluralism, and public reason. He is the author of Experiments in Democracy: Human Embryo Research and the Politics of Bioethics (Columbia University Press, 2017) and co-editor of Perfecting Human Futures: Transhuman Visions and Technological Imaginations (2016), as well as author of numerous articles and book chapters. He received a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard Kennedy School.
Jason Jackson
Ford Career Development Assistant Professor of Political Economy, DUSPMIT
Jason Jackson is Assistant Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Jason’s research is broadly concerned with the relationship between states and markets in processes of economic development and social transformation. Jason is currently engaged with projects on the role of anti-colonial economic nationalism in development; and the rise of the digital platform economy and the future of work.
Sheila Jasanoff
Director, Program on Science, Technology & SocietyHarvard University
Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. A pioneer in her field, she has authored more than 130 articles and chapters and is author or editor of more than 15 books, including The Fifth Branch, Science at the Bar, Designs on Nature, The Ethics of Invention, and Can Science Make Sense of Life? Her work explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies. She founded and directs the STS Program at Harvard; previously, she was founding chair of the STS Department at Cornell. She has held distinguished visiting appointments at leading universities in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the US. Jasanoff served on the AAAS Board of Directors and as President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was selected as the 2022 recipient of the Holberg Prize – dubbed the Nobel prize for social science and humanities- for her prolific and pioneering efforts in the field of science and technology studies. She as also been the recipient of SSRC’s Hirschman prize, the Humboldt Foundation’s Reimar-Lüst award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ehrenkreuz from the Government of Austria, and foreign memberships in the British Academy and the Royal Danish Academy. She holds AB, JD, and PhD degrees from Harvard, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Twente and Liège.
Ray Jayawardhana
Dean, College of Arts and SciencesCornell University
Ray Jayawardhana is the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Hans A. Bethe Professor and Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. As Dean, he has positioned A&S as “the nexus of discovery and impact,” recruiting outstanding faculty, enhancing research excellence, boosting academic programs and student opportunities, and elevating public and media engagement. He also co-leads three cross-college initiatives at Cornell on climate, AI and quantum research. A prolific astrophysicist with nearly 150 papers in scientific journals, Ray uses the largest telescopes on the ground and in space, including the James Webb Space Telescope, to do remote-sensing of exoplanets and to study planet formation and brown dwarfs. An award-winning writer, he has authored acclaimed popular science books including Strange New Worlds, Neutrino Hunters and Child of the Universe, and numerous articles in The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and elsewhere. He has also made hundreds of media appearances, commenting on astronomy and space developments. Ray’s research, writing and outreach have led to numerous accolades, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Radcliffe Fellowship, and the Carl Sagan Medal. Asteroid (4668) Rayjay is named after him.
Karin Knorr Cetina
O. Borchert Distinguished Service ProfessorUniversity of Chicago
Karin Knorr Cetina is the O. Borchert Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Chicago. She is also Co-PI of a project on Agentic Media in the SFB Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen, Germany. She published extensively in the area of science and technology studies, the sociology of finance, and social theory. Her writings include the book “Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge” (Harvard UP 2003; Winner of the Ludwick Fleck Price and Robert K. Merton Professional Award), “Takeover by Science. The Long Contemporary History of Financial” Markets (2020), “Global Microstructures: The Virtual Societies of Financial Markets” (with Urs Bruegger, winner of Theory Prize of the ASA section on Social Theory, 2007) and the just finished book “Synthetic Markets: The Currency Market as a Media-Institution”( to appear 2023). She is currently conducting research on artificially intelligent science, as well as on semi- autonomy as a moral, cultural and social form.
Rachel Kyte
DeanFletcher School, Tufts University
Rachel Kyte is the 14th dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts University. Kyte is the first woman to lead the United States’ oldest graduate-only school of international affairs, which attracts students from all corners of the world and at all stages of their careers. Prior to joining Fletcher, Kyte served as special representative of the UN secretary-general and chief executive officer of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL). She previously was the World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, leading the run-up to the Paris Agreement. She was also vice president at the International Finance Corporation responsible for ESG risk and business advisory services.
In her UN role and as CEO of SEforAll, a public-private platform created by the UN and World Bank, Kyte led efforts to promote and finance clean, reliable and affordable energy as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She served as co-chair of UN Energy. In the 2020 UK New Year Honours, Rachel was appointed as CMG for her services to sustainable energy and combating climate change.
Kyte is a member of the UN secretary-general’s high-level advisory group on climate action and an advisor to the UK presidency of the UN climate talks. Kyte is co-chair of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), and chair of the FONERWA, the Rwanda Green Fund. She serves on the boards of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), the Climate Policy Institute and CDP. She advises investors, governments, and not-for-profits on climate, energy, and finance for sustainable development.
A British citizen, Kyte earned her undergraduate degree from University of London and a Master of Arts in International Relations (GMAP) from The Fletcher School. She is a regular contributor on global media. Kyte has received numerous awards for leadership in climate and sustainable development and was named by Time magazine as one of the 15 women that were leading climate action.
Brice Laurent
Directeur de rechercheCentre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Paris
Brice Laurent is director of the Social Science, Economics & Society Department at ANSES, the French public agency in charge of food, environmental and occupational health and safety, and senior researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation (CSI) at Mines Paris/PSL Research University. Brice Laurent’s research focuses on the relationships between innovation and democracy, and uses the theoretical approaches and empirical methods of Science and Technology Studies (STS). At ANSES, the department he heads is in charge of developing social science expertise and public dialogue. Brice Laurent has published on emerging technologies and the democratic issues they raise, the politics of regulation, and the politics of real-world experiments.
Christine Leuenberger
Director, Science and Technology Studies ProgramNational Science Foundation
Dr. Christine Leuenberger is the Director of the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Studies Program and a Senior Lecturer in Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies. Her research is specialized in Science & Technology Studies, qualitative methods, sociology of medicine, classical and contemporary sociological theory, sociology of knowledge, interactional sociology, sociology of culture, transformation studies of Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern Studies, Peace Studies, and the sociology and history of the human and behavioral sciences. Her current research is on the social impact of borders and barriers in a global context and the history and sociology of cartography in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. She is also engaged in peace and educational initiatives in conflict regions in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Laurence Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished TeachingPrinceton University
Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Laurence Rockefeller Visting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University, and Fellow of the British Academy. He is also Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. He was previously Vice- Chancellor of Ashoka University (2017-2020) and President, Center for Policy Research, Delhi (2005-2017). He has taught Harvard, Ashoka, and NYU Law School. He has published widely on political theory, history of ideas, Indian Constitutional Law and Indian Politics. He is the author of The Burden of Democracy (Penguin 2003) and has produced several edited volumes. He is (most recently) co-editor, with Madhav Khosla and Sujit Choudhary of The Oxford Handbook to the Indian Constitution and of Navigating the Labyrinth: Perspectives on Higher Education in India. He is also Honorary Fellow, St. John’s College Oxford.
His policy experience includes being Convenor of the Prime Minister of India’s Knowledge Commission (2005-2007) and member of India’s National Security Advisory Board. He is also editorial consultant to the Indian Express, and contributes prolifically to public debates. He has also published in the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and numerous other dailies. He is a winner of the Malcolm Adishesiah Prize, and of the Infosys Prize 2011. His citation for the Infosys Prize, written by a Jury Chaired by Amartya Sen read, “Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta has established himself as one of India’s finest scholars and public minds, who has inspired a new generation of intellectual enquiry. He has contributed not only to political philosophy and social theory in general, but has also addressed urgent issues of Indian politics and public policy. Mehta has shown an exemplary willingness to broaden the sphere of public reason and to challenge reigning orthodoxies, while remaining committed to institution building.” Mehta studied PPE at Oxford and has a Ph.D in Politics from Princeton University.
Clark Miller
Associate Director, School for the Future of Innovation in SocietyArizona State University
Clark A. Miller is Director of the Center for Energy & Society and Professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. His most recent books, Designing Knowledge (2018), The Weight of Light (2019), and Cities of Light (2021), explore the use of STS as a framework for analyzing and informing the design of future sociotechnical systems. He has written extensively about the construction and use of knowledge in democratic politics, the globalization of science and scientific institutions, and governance of large-scale transformations in the relationships between technology and society. He also co-authored the recent report, Accelerating Decarbonization of the US Energy System (2021), by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, which includes detailed assessments of the societal and equity dimensions of large-scale transitions in energy technologies.
Gerhard Müller
Vice President for Academic & Student AffairsTechnical University of Munich
Gerhard Müller (b. 1960) conducts research in structural dynamics and vibroacoustics, in particular dynamic soil structure interaction, dynamics of buildings, sound radiation and sound fields generated by vibrations in buildings and vehicles. He uses hybrid deterministic and statistical approaches. His study of Civil Engineering at TUM was followed by his doctorate (TUM, 1989), post-doc at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris, 1991) and habilitation in Technical Mechanics (TUM, 1993). From 1992 he worked in a large engineering firm for room acoustics, noise, vibration and air pollution control, from 1995 as managing director, until he was appointed to TUM in 2004. Since 2007 he is chairman of the education committee in the Bavarian chamber of engineers, starting from January 2019 of the advisory board for engineering education in the Association of German engineers VDI. From 2009 to 10 he chaired the umbrella organization of the engineering faculty associations 4ING e.V, from 2012 to 17 he was president of the European Association for Structural Dynamics. Since 2014 he has been Senior Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs at TUM. Under his leadership, the TUM Teaching Constitution was adopted in 2018, setting out key points for the reform of teaching, which is a central pillar of the future concept TUM Agenda 2030. It documents TUM’s commitment to a fundamental shift in teaching toward more holistic approaches and the development of teaching formats that transcend disciplinary boundaries. In 2018 Gerhard Müller became a member of the Board of Directors of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI). In 2020 Prof. Müller took over the chairmanship of the board of the Bavarian-French University Center and since October 2020 he has been a member of the Bavarian Ethics Council.
Arjun Nageswaran
Class of ’25Harvard College
Arjun Nageswaran is a sophomore in Quincy House originally from Buffalo Grove, Illinois planning to concentrate in applied math.
Venky Narayanamurti
Founding Dean, School of Engineering & Applied SciencesHarvard University
Venkatesh Narayanamurti is the Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy, Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Physics Emeritus at Harvard University. He was formerly the John L. Armstrong Professor and Founding Dean of the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Professor of Physics and Dean of Physical Sciences at Harvard. From 2009 to 2015 he served as the Director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of more than 240 scientific papers in different areas of condensed matter and applied physics. He lectures widely on solid state, computer, and communication, and energy technologies, and on the management of science, technology and public policy. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an elected member of the U.S National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He served as Foreign Secretary of NAE from 2011 to 2015.
Melissa Nobles
ChancellorMIT
Melissa Nobles is chancellor and professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined the faculty in 1995. She previously served as the Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (2015–2021) and head of the Department of Political Science (2013–2015). Nobles oversees “all things students”, is responsible for undergraduate and graduate education and residential life and plays a leading role in strategic planning, faculty appointments, resource development and campus planning activities. She is the author of Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census, The Politics of Official Apologies, and co-author of the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive housed at Northeastern University Library. Launched in September 2022, the archive is a digital resource dedicated to identifying, classifying, and providing factual information and documentation about anti-black killings in the American South, 1930-1954. The archive is connected to her current comparative research on restorative justice in light of ethnic and racial conflicts. Nobles earned a BA in history from Brown University and an MA and PhD in political science from Yale University.
David Oxtoby
PresidentAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences
David W. Oxtoby has served as President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2019, focusing on broadening the diversity of the Academy’s membership and advancing policy work in areas ranging from strengthening American democracy to climate change, nuclear arms control, undergraduate education, and the arts. From 2017-2018 he was Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and co-founded the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. He is President Emeritus of Pomona College, where he served as President from 2003–2017 and helped to advance environmental sustainability, increasing college access, cultivating creativity, and pursuing academic excellence. Previously he served as Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences and William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago.
Shobita Parthasarathy
Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, Gerald R. Ford School of Public PolicyUniversity of Michigan
Shobita Parthasarathy is Professor of Public Policy and Women’s and Gender Studies, and co-founder and Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at University of Michigan. Established in 2006, the STPP Program is a university-wide research, training, and public and policy engagement center; in 2022 it launched the Community Partnerships Initiative to provide research and other support to community organizations so they can engage in technical and policy advocacy related to science and technology. Parthasarathy also co-hosts The Received Wisdom podcast, on the intersections between science, technology, policy, and society. Her research examines the political economy of innovation and innovation policy focusing on equity and justice, and the politics of knowledge and expertise in public policymaking. She often takes a cross-national or international perspective in her research, and has published widely on genetics and biotechnology, intellectual property, innovation policy, and artificial intelligence. She is the author of numerous articles and two books: Building Genetic Medicine: Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics of Health Care (MIT Press, 2007) and Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2017). The former influenced the 2013 US Supreme Court case that determined human genes were not patentable; the latter won the 2018 Robert K. Merton Award from the American Sociological Association. She speaks frequently to public and policy audiences; in February and July 2021, for example, she testified to the US Congress about equity in energy innovation. Parthsarathy holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from University of Chicago, and Master’s and PhD degrees in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University.
Heather Paxson
Program Head, AnthropologyMIT
Heather Paxson is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and Head of the Anthropology Program at MIT, where she has won numerous teaching and mentoring awards and has served as Director of Graduate Studies for the PhD program in History; Anthropology; and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS). She is currently completing a 5-year term as co-editor of Cultural Anthropology, the open access journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology. She served as Program Chair for the 2017 Meetings of the Society for Social Studies of Science, held in Boston.
Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Founding Head, Department of Science, Technology and SocietyTechnical University Munich
Sebastian Pfotenhauer is Carl von Linde Professor of Innovation Research and Department Head of the Department for Science, Technology and Society (STS) at Technical University of Munich. As an STS and innovation policy scholar, he studies regional innovation cultures, innovation and inequality, the governance of emerging technologies, and responsible innovation practices. He regularly serves as consultant to governments and international organizations. Sebastian currently serves as the coordinator of the Munich Cluster for the Future of Mobility in Metropolitan Regions (M Cube), a EUR 50 Million flagship initiative on sustainable mobility innovation funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. He is also the coordinator of the EU Horizon2020 project SCALINGS (“Scaling up co-creation: Avenues and Limits for Integrating Society in Science and Innovation”) – a EUR 4 Million European investigating use of new collaborative innovation formats such as living labs and pre-commercial procurement in robotics, autonomous driving, and urban energy systems. At TUM, he serves as academic director for the TUM Master’s program RESET (“Responsibility in Science, Engineering and Technology”). Before joining TU Munich, he was a research scientist and lecturer with the MIT Technology & Public Policy Program as well as a fellow at the Harvard Program on Science, Technology and Society. His work has appeared, among other outlets, in Social Studies of Science, Research Policy, Nature, Science, Technology & Human Values, and the OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook.
Pariroo Rattan
PhD Student, Public PolicyHarvard University
Pariroo Rattan is a PhD student in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Program on Science, Technology and Society. She is interested in thinking closely about the politics of narratives of “progress” in relation to institutions of knowledge production. In particular, her dissertation will focus on how the introduction of scientific methods in theoretical and applied Economics has shaped discourse on “development” and explore contestations on the ground.
Before starting her PhD at Harvard, Pariroo completed her Master’s degree in Development Economics at Yale University on the KC Mahindra Scholarship. After which, she spent a year conducting research to understand construction of macroeconomic ‘growth’ across Yale University, University of Oslo, London School of Economics and College De France. Pariroo holds a BA in Economics from the University of Delhi.
Jenny Reardon
Founding Director, Science and Justice Research CenterUniversity of California, Santa Cruz
Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). She has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Humboldt Foundation, the London School of Economics, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and the United States Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.
Julie Reuben
Charles Warren Professor of the History of American EducationHarvard University
Julie Reuben is the Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education and the Faculty Director of the Phillips Brooks Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship. She is a historian of American Higher Education and has researched and written about the development of the modern research university, the re-orientation of American higher education to focus on strengthening democracy in the middle of the twentieth century and the impact of student activism in the 1960s.
Mathias Risse
Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and PhilosophyHarvard Kennedy School
Mathias Risse is Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. His work primarily addresses questions of global justice ranging from human rights, inequality, taxation, trade and immigration to climate change, obligations to future generations and the future of technology, especially also the impact of artificial intelligence on a range of normative issues. He has also worked on questions in ethics, decision theory and 19th century German philosophy, especially Nietzsche.
Arundhati Roy
AuthorArundhati Roy studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives. She is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. A collection of her essays from the past twenty years, My Seditious Heart, was recently published by Haymarket Books.
Ambuj Sagar
Deputy Director (Strategy & Planning)Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi
Ambuj Sagar is the Deputy Director (Strategy & Planning) and the Vipula and Mahesh Chaturvedi Professor of Policy Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. He previously was the founding Head of the School of Public Policy at IIT Delhi. Ambuj’s interests broadly lie at the intersection of science, technology and development. His recent work has focused on innovation policy for meeting sustainability and inclusivity challenges, energy innovation policy and strategies (in areas such as biofuels, clean cookstoves, coal power, automobiles, and institutional mechanisms such as climate innovation centers), climate change policy and politics, capacity development, and higher education policy.
Ambuj has been on numerous national and international expert groups and also has been consultant/advisor to various Indian Govt. agencies as well as many multilateral and bilateral agencies. He was a Lead Author in WGIII of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report and currently is a member of the Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the UN Secretary-General to prepare the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023.
Ambuj did his undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Delhi. He subsequently received an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan and then an M.S. in Materials Science, a Ph.D. in Polymer Science, and an M.S. in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Krishanu Saha
Associate ProfessorUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison
Krishanu Saha is Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was recently named the McPherson Eye Research Institute’s Retina Research Foundation Kathryn and Latimer Murfee Chair for 2019-2022. His lab is at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), and he participates on campus in the executive committees of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center, Robert F. Holtz Center on Science and Technology Studies, and Forward Bio Institute. Prior to his arrival in Madison, Saha studied chemical engineering and biotechnology at Cornell University, University of Cambridge, and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2007 he became a Society in Science: Branco-Weiss fellow in the laboratory of Professor Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT and with Professor Sheila Jasanoff in the Program on Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At UW-Madison, major thrusts of his lab involve gene editing and cell engineering of human cells found in the retina, central nervous system, liver, and blood. He has published more than 70 scientific manuscripts, filed several patents, and received awards that include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Biomedical Engineering Society’s Rising Star Award, and Gund Harrington Scholar Award. He is a member of the National Academies’ Forum on Regenerative Medicine, a co-lead for the T cell testbed within the National Science Foundation’s Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT) and a Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the National Institutes for Health’s Somatic Cell Genome Editing (SCGE) Consortium.
Daniel Schrag
Sturgis Hooper Professor of GeologyHarvard University
Daniel Schrag is Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology and professor of environmental science and engineering at Harvard University where he serves as director of the Center for the Environment. A graduate of Yale University, he received a Ph.D. in geology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. His research focuses on climate change over the broadest range of Earth’s history as well as on energy technology and energy policy. With John Marshall, Schrag co-founded the Potential Energy Coalition, a non-profit organization that harnesses the best minds from marketing and advertising to communicate the risks of climate change to Americans. From 2009 to 2017, he served on President Obama’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Hilton Simmet
PhD Student, Public PolicyHarvard University
Hilton Simmet is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy and a Research Associate with the STS Program at Harvard Kennedy School. In 2021-22 he was a graduate fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. For the 2022-23 academic year he has been awarded a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard for study in France and India.
Hilton’s interests center on the relationship between political theory and public policy, with a particular focus on the role of economics in defining contemporary ideas of justice and progress. His dissertation research asks how the social sciences of poverty, inequality and development address the politics of justice in comparative context. In particular, he examines how diverse social science methods—randomized control trials (RCTs), historical data collection, and citizen engagement—navigate the boundary between scientific analysis and political action in the US, France and India. Through this work he hopes to understand how the quantitative social sciences turn normative problems of social justice into technical problems amenable to public policy solutions.
Hilton holds an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College and an M.A. in Political Science from Yale University. He was a 2015-16 Fulbright Fellow in Senegal, West Africa.
Sergio Sismondo
Professor of PhilosophyQueens University, Canada
Sergio Sismondo is a Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, and is editor of the journal Social Studies of Science. In one side of his work, he is a generalist in Science and Technology Studies, a field that looks at science, technology and medicine as social and material activities. In his empirical research, he shines lights on some important tactics and practices that drug companies use to influence medicine, and has developed a framework for understanding political economies of pharmaceutical knowledge.
Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Professor of Anthropology and of Social SciencesUniversity of Chicago
Kaushik Sunder Rajan’s work lies at the intersection of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS), with commitments to social theories of capitalism and postcolonial studies. He seeks to understand the political economy of the contemporary life sciences and biomedicine, with a primary empirical focus on the United States and India. His recent book Pharmocracy: Value, Politics and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine, elucidates the political economy of global pharmaceuticals as seen from contemporary India. Previously, he wrote Biocapital: The Constitution of Post-Genomic Life (Duke 2006), a multi-sited ethnography of genomics and post-genomic drug development marketplaces in the United States and India that tracks the nature and manner of the co-production of economic and epistemic value in contemporary life sciences. He is also the editor of Lively Capital: Biotechnologies, Ethics and Governance in Global Markets (Duke 2012).
Charis Thompson
Chancellor’s Professor, Divisions of Computing, Data Science and Society, and Social SciencesUniversity of California, Berkeley
Charis Thompson is Chancellor’s Professor and most recently served as Associate Dean for Campus Partnerships in the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society, at UC Berkeley. She is the author of Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies, which won the 2007 Rachel Carson Award from the Society for the Social Study of Science, and of Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research. She is a recipient of UC Berkeley’s Social Science Division Distinguished Teaching Award and received an Honorary Doctorate for Services to Science and Society from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). During the pandemic, she was the Visiting Professor for the School of Social Science at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, co-convening the seminar on Science and the State with Professor Alondra Nelson. She has served on the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Technology, Values, and Policy, and the Nuffield Working Group on Human Genome Modification.
Patricia Williams
University Distinguished Professor of Law and HumanitiesNortheastern University
Patricia J. Williams holds a joint appointment in both the School of Law and the Department of Philosophy at Northeastern University. She has authored six books, and hundreds of chapters, essays, and articles for professional journals and popular press. Williams is a MacArthur fellow and the recipient of seven honorary doctorates.
Christiane Woopen
Director, Center for Life EthicsUniversity of Bonn
Christiane Woopen has been Heinrich Hertz Professor of Life Ethics at the University of Bonn and founding director of the Center for Life Ethics since October 2021. Previously, she was Professor of Ethics and Theory of Medicine at the University of Cologne, where she was Founding Director of the interfaculty Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health (ceres). In addition to leading national and international research projects, she is involved in policy advocacy, including as Chair of the German Ethics Council (2012-2016), as President of the Global Summit of National Ethics Councils (2014-2016), as a member of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee until 2017, and as Chair of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) from 2017 to 2021. Woopen is a member of several academies of sciences (NRW, BBAW, Academia Europaea) and was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class.
Rebecca Xi
Class of ’22Harvard College
Rebecca Xi graduated from Harvard College in May 2022 with a degree in Applied Mathematics & Economics and a secondary in Government. She is taking a year to travel and write before going into management consulting in New York next summer.