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The mission of the Science, Technology, and Society Center (STSC) is to advance understanding of scientific and technological practice and knowledge in their local, national and international settings, coordinating and promoting scholarship, teaching, and outreach regarding their deep intertwinings in society.

Berkeley’s STSC is uniquely positioned within IAS to emphasize our commitment to scholarship on science, technology and society in a globalizing world.

Among our organizing themes are: sustained inquiry into open and closed science; overcoming local and global divides; links between science and democracy.

Learn more about the Center and its themes, its events and projects, and the rich resources of people, courses, and programs at Berkeley.

News

Patent Pools for Neglected Disease and Global Health
November 6th, 2009
UC Berkeley

Patent pools have facilitated the creation of aircraft, DVDs, innovations arising from the SARS virus genome, and digital music files. Forming a patent pool for neglected disease or HIV/AIDS medicines could facilitate powerful innovation with immediate benefit to the health of millions. At this conference, scientists, patient advocates, IP scholars, pharmaceutical and biotech executives, and legal professionals will discuss the design of prior pools, consider the proposed HIV/AIDS pool, and evaluate additional pool designs for neglected diseases.
Invited participants include stakeholders from global health (UNITAID and MSF-Doctors Without Borders), pharmaceutical and biotech companies (Gilead, Tibotec, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, and Genentech), not-for-profit biomedical research (University of California, Emory University, Yale University, Stanford University, and the University of North Carolina), and some of the field’s most important life science and IP counselors (Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Fenwick & West, Covington & Burling, Fish & Richardson, and Morrison|Foerster). Designed to facilitate collaboration across sectors, the workshop aims to combine the best science and the best practices of university, industry, and not-for-profit actors to address a preeminent challenge of our generation – the creation and distribution of essential medicines.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/patentpools/about.html

CALL FOR PAPERS

14th annual Comparative Literature Intra-Student Faculty Forum (CLIFF)
March 25-27 2010
University of Michigan- Ann Arbor

Keynote speaker:
CARY WOLFE
Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English
Rice University-Houston, TX

ANIMALITIES

Perhaps no other category of beings has been used to generate kinship and otherness with equal conflicting tension in relation to humans than animals. While contemporary research in biology progressively confirms physiological and behavioral similarities between the two, it is often more revealing to note the divergent but always available criteria--such as anima, sentience, intelligence, and language--used through different periods to connote a persistent distinction between humans and animals. Some of the questions this conference is interested in exploring include: How has the notion of the animal shifted in different time periods? What does it mean for us to represent animals? In what ways do zoological representations illuminate the human-animal rapport aesthetically and ethically? More broadly, how could we theorize the human-animal rapport? How has it remained static? What roles then do animals or conceptions of animals play in different academic disciplines? This year's CLIFF conference provides the opportunity to examine a range of questions surrounding the animal. Ideally, the conference will also be a forum to assess the potential implications of animal studies as an emerging interdisciplinary field.

300-word abstracts for 15-minute paper presentations due:
DECEMBER 1st 2009

All submissions and questions should be addressed to: 2010cliff@gmail.com

THE MOVING EARTH
A new documentary from Icarus Films

The Moving Earth chronicles the scientific revolution
throughout Renaissance Europe, which directly challenged Church authority, including the efforts of Tycho Brahe, a Danish nobleman who built the first observatory and catalogued the planets and stars; Johannes Kepler, a German mathematician who established the laws of planetary motion; Galileo Galilei, an Italian physicist tried by the Inquisition for his advocacy of Copernicanism, forced to recant, and placed under house arrest; Giordano Bruno, the Italian astronomer who, for his theories of the infinite nature of the universe, was accused of heresy and burned at the stake; and Isaac Newton, the English physicist who described natural laws such as universal gravitation.

Contemporary scientists and historians, including Simon Schaffer (Cambridge University), John Christianson (Luther College), Owen Gingerich (Harvard University), George Coyne (Vatican Observatory) and Patricia Fara (Cambridge University), discuss these groundbreaking developments.

http://www.icarusfilms.com/new2009/mov.html

Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics
http://www.greenwallfsp.org/index.htm.

The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics is a career
development award to enable outstanding junior faculty members to carry out original research that will help resolve important policy and clinical dilemmas at the intersection of ethics and the life sciences. This research will also put Faculty Scholars in a position to help set public policy and standards of clinical practice. Scientific advances in the life sciences have raised dilemmas in public policy, research, and clinical practice regarding such issues as human cloning, stem cell research, gene therapy, and new information technologies. Effective approaches and resolutions to such problems may come from a variety of disciplines including medicine, law, philosophy, religion, other fields in the humanities, and the social sciences.

For more detailed information, visit http://www.greenwallfsp.org/index.htm.

Deadline to SPO for campus applications: October 9, 2009
Deadline to SPO for selected proposal: November 13, 2009
Deadline to the Greenwall Foundation for selected proposal: November 20,2009

Science for Humanity

Science for Humanity is pleased to invite people in STS related fields to join our network of individuals and organizations seeking to collaborate in making science work for humanity. The Science for Humanity network will give you the benefits of networking with a diverse range of bright and enthusiastic individuals, and organizations keen to work for socially responsible causes. It will also provide you with the opportunity to share your ideas and apply your skills in helping solve the most pressing issues facing humanity.

Visit www.scienceforhumanity.net for further information.

University College London "Global Citizenship” Program

The new "Global Citizenship" Program at University College
London now offers an undergraduate Study Abroad Year. Undergraduates will take several courses centered in science and technology studies addressing concerns of global citizenship and take part in an action-based course where they collectively design and promote a campaign around a global issue. Short internships are also available in London-based organizations working on issues related to global citizenship. We welcome students with a background in natural sciences, humanities or
the liberal arts. Please contact us at
global-citizen@ucl.ac.uk or via the program website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/global-citizen/

MSc Medicine, Science and Society
King's College, University of London

This new MSc* focuses on innovative medical technologies and particularly the interaction between the lab and the clinic. The programme will enable students to apply key theories and concepts critically, equipping them with the skills necessary to engage with debates about the nature of contemporary
‘biomedical societies’. It will broaden and deepen the student’s appreciation of common problems in the social study of biomedicine and biotechnology, and explore the ways these are addressed in different societies.

For further information, please contact:
Professor Clare Williams
Professor of Social Science of Biomedicine
Co-Director Centre for Biomedicine & Society (CBAS)
School of Social Science & Public Policy
King’s College London
Strand, London WC2R 2LS
Tel: 020 7848 3779
Email: clare.2.williams@kcl.ac.uk

Professor Steven Wainwright
Professor of Sociology of Medicine, Science & the Arts
Co-Director Centre for Biomedicine & Society (CBAS)
School of Social Science & Public Policy
King’s College London
Strand
London WC2R 2LS
Tel: 020 7848 3214
Email: steven.wainwright@kcl.ac.uk

STS-Related Events at Berkeley

•	Science Policy Networking Event; Tuesday, 17 November, 2009

•	CALVIN’s Adventures in Modeling California’s Statewide Water System; Wednesday, 18 November, 2009 - Jay Lund

•	Due Processing: Incarceration and the Digital Divide; Wednesday, 2 December, 2009 - West Hays, Alayna Johnson

•	Improving Access to Education; Wednesday, 9 December, 2009 - Gary Lopez

View full calendar of events

Berkeley Institute of the Environmental & The Science, Technology and Society Center

Faculty Roundtable 2008-2009

Green Innovation and Justice

“Innovation” generally has positive connotations, and the emerging wave of “green innovation” doubly so. Technological advances clearly have a role to play in addressing the world’s most serious problems, notably the replacement of fossil fuels and the provision of clean water. However, the mere creation of technologies guarantees neither their effective deployment, nor an equitable distribution of their risks and benefits. Furthermore, “green innovation” as currently conceptualized is not doing enough to address the critical inequalities across race, gender, and class that exist with regard to environmental goods and services. This BIE roundtable will bring together key U.C. Berkeley faculty as well as community groups working at the intersection of sustainable development, urban planning, environmental health sciences, environmental justice, and science and technology policy. The focal theme will be “green innovations” and justice. The group is committed to a “critical” approach to innovation that will bring procedural and distributive justice within “green development” and technology transfer to the fore. The group will target technological and urban policy innovations in areas such as environmental and health monitoring, water and energy provision and distribution, and green collar job development.

Themes of the Roundtable

A variety of institutions including governments, firms, international institutions, and universities are advancing urban sustainability through green innovations such as environmental monitoring, green job creation, and decentralized methods of water and sewage treatment. However, the benefits of such ‘green’ innovation may be diminished in urban areas unless (a) communities are treated not as recipients but as innovators in their own right; and (b) innovations are directly linked with community well being. The following is an illustrative list of themes that the group will take up in its work:

·        Due process for green innovation. Procedures within government and city planning have been critiqued for their lack of inclusiveness. In part because of dramatic failures in large-scale “sustainable” development projects, public participation in the governance of technological innovation is now viewed as essential in dialogues about “technology for development.” Therefore, it is critical to examine the institutions and procedures of participation in decisions about “clean” technology and technological systems for urban environments.

·        Involvement of community organizations. A focus on community engagement in the various stages of technological design situates this proposal firmly within the emerging literature concerning “upstream and downstream engagement” in technological assessment. In order to facilitate the identification and development of promising opportunities of relevance to impacted communities, roundtable discussions will periodically include representatives of local NGOs such as the Ella Baker Center and the Greenlining Institute.

·        Local histories, local knowledge. Green innovation often operates according to generalized and technology-driven logics. We use the term “critical innovation” in part to emphasize that successful green innovation will require critical reflection on the complex ways that technological artifacts operate within particular social contexts. For instance, how can “green development” incorporate attention to community history, trust variables, landowner resistance, experiences and knowledge of local residents (especially underrepresented racial, ethnic and socio-economic groups)?

·        Metrics. How can the use of new metrics of success for green innovation help advance the goals of distributional and procedural justice from mere aspiration to reality? What types of innovation metrics should be advanced as part of a robust and inclusive vision for urban sustainability? For example, what counts as a “green job”?

The group meets fortnightly on Fridays from 1:30 – 3 pm in Giannini Hall.
For more information, please contact Professor David Winickoff ( Winickoff@nature.berkeley.edu) or Professor Alastair Iles (iles@nature.berkeley.edu)

Chancellor's Stem Cell Initiative at STSC

Chancellor Birgeneau has recently allocated funds to jump start UC Berkeley's brand new Stem Cell Center.

Through the STSC, a proportion of the Chancellor's funds will be made available for research and training in the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of stem cell research. These funds are being used to support the Regional Oral History Office's comprehensive stem cell archive, and four ELSI conferences. In addition to the comprehensive stem cell archive and the conferences, the ELSI effort will include the training of a number of graduate and undergraduate students, under the Stem Cells and Humanities grant awarded to Professors Cori Hayden and Chris Thompson by the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

If you have questions about the ELSI Program or funds application process , please contact Professor Charis Thompson. Charis Thompson, STSC Co-Director, is the Project Director for the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) portion of UC Berkeley's Stem Cell initiative.

UC STS Network Wiki
As part of the UC STS Network, UC Davis has launched an interactive wiki site, "STSNET". It provides a collective space to post local events, grad community activities, syllabi, and upcoming STS classes across the network. You can help keep the site up to date by registering and editing the pages yourself, or you can write Joseph Dumit and Chris Kortright at UC Davis and they will post it.

STSC Location and Contact Information

360 Stephens Hall #2300
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2300
Telephone: 510-642-9656
Fax: 510-642-9466

E-mail: stsc@berkeley.edu
URL: http://stsc.berkeley.edu

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