Past Events

In Phoenix, a number of world-renowned assets are in position to address a variety of health issues, from genetic diseases to chronic behavioral disease. The presence of these assets, both physical and human based, drew our attention to the topic of Healing in the Nano City. Tonight, we want to better understand how diverse sets of knowledge and skills can be best brought to bear on illnesses. We want to pay particular attention to equity and equality in the distribution of health care services that are enabled by future technologies.

How will different knowledge sets contribute to addressing diseases in the future? Are new pathways of disease detection, via novel imaging technology or genetics, assisting in our understanding of illnesses? How might we treat genetic disease in the future? How will we ensure equitable distribution of nanotechnology enabled health care services? How will people respond to these new ways of understanding and treating disease?

How do we know what science is "the right science" to do? How can we effectively orient the vast research enterprise to make real progress toward societal goals? Since its inception, CSPO and its network of researchers have been developing models, tools, and methods to help address fundamental questions in science policy.

The goal of this seminar series is to help science policy "grow up, and quickly," by catalyzing discussions and collaborations between science policy researchers and decision makers about new ideas and approaches for improving the social value of science and technology.

We live in an age where new technologies hit the marketplace at a rate that far outpaces society's ability to engage in meaningful political debates about their ethical, legal, and political implications. Synthetic biology, nanotechnology and Big Data are only a few recent examples. This coincides with a rapid deterioration of traditional science journalism, i.e., the institution that has long helped translate complex science for lay and policy audiences. This talk explores the future of societal debates about controversial science in our highly polarized policy environment. How can citizens make meaningful policy choices in an age of (anti-)science blogs and vicious online debates? And what can we learn from recent empirical work in the social sciences about strategies for navigating this brave new world of science policy?

Dietram A. Scheufele is the John E. Ross Professor in Science Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Co-PI of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University. Currently, he also co-chairs the National Academies' Roundtable on Public Interfaces in the Life Sciences. His most recent research examines the role of social media and other emerging modes of communication in our society. An elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, Scheufele is listed among the ten most cited researchers in the communication discipline. Scheufele has been a tenured faculty member at Cornell University, a Shorenstein fellow at Harvard University, and a DAAD Visiting Professor at the Technische Universitt Dresden. His consulting experience includes work for PBS, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and other corporate and public sector clients in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

lunch will be served

Sponsored by:
Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
School of Politics and Global Studies
Hugh Downs School of Human Communication
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

In this country and in this city, privacy is highly valued and coveted. Privacy influences many elements of our city from housing design to our preferences for private automobiles. Yet, in Arizona there is a significant commitment to unmanned aerial vehicles, wall-penetrating imaging, and long distance surveillance technology. And while most of these technologies are being developed for use in military and border security applications, they are also likely to become tools for city, county and state police forces. These forms of technology leverage existing (and future) nanotechnology. They are quietly breaking down the ability to retain our private lives. From our Facebook pages to our email the use of electronic surveillance is breaking down our notions of privacy. With the volumes of data being compiled and the expanded use of drone (unmanned aerial vehicles) and other surveillance technology, there are challenges to the cultural expectation and value of privacy.

What does privacy mean in the Nano City? How might nanotechnology threaten to undermine the cultural values aligned with privacy? Who gets to decide what is private and what is semi-private and what is public? Can nanotechnology strengthen our levels of privacy, while encouraging greater data and information sharing? Are information sharing and privacy opposing forces?

If we look at the broader history of technology, we see rare individuals possessing a clear vision of an expansive future created by technologies they studied, designed, and promoted. Pushing beyond speculations, their activities sometimes produced actual things and influenced policy. Just as importantly, these people also built communities and networks so they could connect their radical ideas for the technological future to interested citizens, politicians, and business leaders. This talk explores the activities of two such visioneers Gerard O'Neill and Eric Drexler who advocated space settlements and nanotechnologies in response to perceived threats of eco-catastrophism and planetary limits.

Visioneers and the communities of researchers, futurists, and entrepreneurs they attracted have often existed at the blurry border between scientific fact, technological possibility, and optimistic speculation. Their design, imagining, and promotion form part of a longer chain of technological enthusiasm that has marked much of America's history. Nonetheless, visioneers and their supporters were not immune to the lures of profit, celebrity, and sensationalism. And, as their ideas received wider attention and publicity, they also worked to defend the purity and original goals of their visions from fringe characters as well as mainstream scientists. Finally, considering visioneers as a particular analytical category provides an opportunity to reexamine the uptake and adoption of radical ideas in contemporary technological ecosystems.

Join filmmaker Regan Brashear to view her new film "FIXED: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement." (http://fixedthemovie.com/)

What does disabled mean when a man with no legs can run as fast as many Olympic sprinters? What does normal mean when cosmetic surgery procedures have risen over four hundred percent over the last fifteen years* and increasing numbers of students and business people with no diagnosed condition turn to smart drugs every day to get ahead at school or work? With prenatal screening able to predict hundreds of probable conditions, who should determine what kind of people get to be born? If you could augment your bodys abilities in any way imaginable, would you? What would you do and is the science already on its way? From pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to neural implants and bionic limbs to exoskeletons, researchers around the world are hard at work developing a myriad of technologies to fix or enhance the human body, but what does it mean to design better humans in the 21st century and do we want to?

Pizza will be served
Movie viewing noon-1pm
discussion 1-1:45pm

What we now refer to as "development" really began in a systematic way after World War II. The victors had a variety of pressures to address, the most fearsome being the threat of yet another emerging conflict, this time involving new applications of science and technology and even more deadly weaponry. Moreover, the relationship between the economic and social devastation of World War I and the rise of a fanatical rgime in Germany was regarded as self-evident. As a consequence, new approaches to prevent further conflict as well as to deter an emerging and aggressive Soviet Union were embraced as a new expression of, in the words of the time, the "Arsenal of the West". This seminar explores the questions of how that war and development co-exist, why it is still going on even after the threat to which it was primarily directed is past, and whether different results can be expected in the future.

In this talk, visiting scholar Weiwen Duan of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences will explore the recent crisis of scientific misconduct in China from cheating on project applications to fabrication of research results to the misuse of funds, along with problems in research ethics. He will look at the reasons for this misconduct and the role of public opinion and the actions of the scientific communities and government, as well as problems with implementing regulations, impacts of and on international cooperation and new directions in policy.

ASU graduate students will conduct NanoDays demonstrations about nanoscale science and engineering and its potential impact on the future, at the Tempe Festival for the Arts. Sponsored by CNS-ASU, NNIN,and NISEnet, and part of the informal science communication program for graduate students at ASU.

Bridging Boundaries between Science & Technology Policy & Studies

The conference develops emerging S&T scholars and promotes the academic and professional advancement of graduate students in the traditionally fragmented community of scholars working in S&T policy and social research.

Call for Papers - abstracts due 11/30

Computer simulations of complex social dynamics have the potential to positively influence public awareness of factors underlying social problems. Too often, however these models are not user-friendly, and give rise to misunderstanding instead of clarification. Consider the Peter Principle, which holds that employees rise to their level of incompetence. We can all think of anecdotal examples of this, but like Murphys Law, little empirical evidence supports the general veracity of this principle. A recent simulation study (Pluchino, Rapisarda, & Garofolo, 2010) has been purported to demonstrate its validity, and has attracted considerable press. This has real-world implications: For example, the Peter Principle is now being used in litigation to justify terminating older employees. I have developed a simpler and more comprehensible simulation of the Peter Principle, which clearly shows that it only holds when an organization has an ineffective selection/promotion system (a conclusion hidden in the more broadly known model). The media has latched onto the idea that the principle is valid simply because the existing model is too complex and its presentation too opaque. This underscores the need to disseminate models that are tuned to the attention span and the cognitive capabilities of the publicto create user-centered Agent Based Models. Such efforts could address a whole host of misconceptions about social problems that arise simply because people cannot appreciate how complex systems can evolve in catastrophic directions. CSPO has the potential to leverage existing resources at ASU to create and publicize a variety of interactive web-based tools that could be used in a similar fashion to inform social policy.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza. Please RSVP to cspo@asu.edu.

Effective standards are at once technical specifications for various people, processes, and products, as well as world-changing phenomena. Put simply, standards are one means by which we determine who we are and how we shall live. Alternatively, standards are more than technical specifications; effectively implemented standards are part of the social infrastructure that makes a given type of society possible. This, in turn, suggests that if we are to collectively decide what kind of society we want the recent turn to private standards (and away from government regulation) cannot be left in the hands of a few experts, but must be subjected to democratic deliberation. This is especially true if the scope of standards is to be expanded so as to include both new fields of technological development (e.g., nanotechnologies) and wicked problems (e.g., sustainability).

Today we think of power in two very different ways that might not be so different after all. First, there is power as a form of authority. Authority is exercised by politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, corporate officers, and by citizens in different ways and at different times. Power is also the term many of us use for electricity. We plug our machines into power strips and we see large power generating stations and power lines running throughout our city. We want to wrestle with these two definitions of power and allow for them to be, almost, used interchangeably.

Considering the functionality of emerging nano-enabled technologies that generate electricity, how might these nanotechnologies change the power dynamics in the Nano City? Or how might the power dynamics become further entrenched and seemingly more powerful? How do our political power structures impact the distribution of electricity (and its power)? Might a radical shift in electricity technology result in a shift in political power? Which powerful players are seeking to avoid such shifts and preserve the status quo?

We live in an age where new technologies hit the marketplace at a rate that far outpaces societys ability to engage in meaningful political debates about their ethical, legal, and political implications. Synthetic biology, nanotechnology and Big Data are only a few recent examples. This coincides with a rapid deterioration of science journalism, i.e., the institution that has traditionally helped translate complex science for lay and policy audiences. This talk explores the future of societal debates about controversial science in our highly polarized policy environment. How can citizens make meaningful policy choices in an age of (anti-)science blogs and vicious online debates? And what can we learn from recent empirical work in the social sciences about strategies for navigating this brave new world of science policy?

We understand the world through stories. Our stories may be rooted in rigorous fact or unbounded imagination but, being incomplete, they are always lies. Many are useful, however, because humans are pattern-seeking animals. Stories are the way we make sense of a complex world. We build our very selves through the stories that make sense to us that we chose to believe.
So what is the future of truth?

Technoscientific research always involves simplification and standardization. In recent years the collection and analysis of Large Scale Data Sets (LSDS) in fields as diverse as marketing, physics, finance, sociology, molecular biology, and logistics has become the norm. LSDS are often convenience samples, analyzed by data mining techniques. Moreover, these data are often used as the basis for public and private policy and action. A number of issues of concern arise out of the simplifications/standardizations that are found in LSDS. These include: (1) lossiness (irreversible loss of detail), (2) drift over time and space, (3) disproportionality (extreme outliers have an impact on variables of interest), (4) distancing of the observer from the phenomenon of interest, (5) amplification of that which can be calculated and standardized, even as other aspects of phenomena are reduced, (6) assuming that underlying relations hold uniformly across time and space as opposed to being situated, (7) displacement of hermeneutic questions as the data appear to speak for themselves, (8) shifts in the depiction of risk and consequent shifts in behavior, (9) rules for errors, and (10) the problem of experimentality (experiments rarely end when products leave the laboratory) , (11) the role of standards for collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, and (12) a variety of ethical concerns. At the same time, large scale suggests completeness, while ease of collection and analysis suggest that little else need be done. Both tend to crowd out other interpretations; hence, understanding the limits of LSDS should be of the utmost concern.

Join fellow solar energy researchers to learn about the issues managers, researchers and grantwriters deal with in their roles and explore the larger social, economic and policy context in which solar energy development takes place

Some visionaries are planning a robotic future where drone aircraft will home-deliver your take-out Burrito. Unfortunately, the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 does not provide a durable framework for us to welcome the arrival of the drones. In order to facilitate public acceptance of drones, these aircraft must safely and reliably operate in in accordance with law.

Professor Takahashi finds a sharp, legal break with tradition buried within the fine print of the Act. He advocates a framework that enables robotic aircraft to enter the national airspace through modification of existing government regulations, specifically repudiating the idea enshrined in the Act that drones represent a new paradigm that can only flourish in the absence of regulation. Government should continue to employ a system founded on proven engineering standards, empowered by long standing statutes, to carefully scrutinize the inherent engineering of drone aircraft prior to issuing an airworthiness certificate. These inspections exist first and foremost to protect our citizens from aerially inflicted harm to their person or property.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza. Please RSVP to cspo@asu.edu.

Investment in Nanotechnology research is based on the promise of a transition to active nanotechnology, nanostructures, and nanodevices - everything from self-healing materials to molecular machines. But is such a transition really underway, and if so, then where and at what pace? What evidence can be gathered from large-scale analysis of global publications and patents? What insights can be gained by assessing the pace of transition and process of adoption for next generation nanotechnology? What could be the impact of these evidence and insights upon investment and research decisions in nanotechnology and its applications? Drawing from work undertaken by Youtie, Shapira and their colleagues at Georgia Tech, the seminar will present evidence tracking nanotechnology research and commercialization and draw implications for anticipatory governance and public policy.

How will climate change affect the infrastructure of America's cities? Are communities at risk of climate change related disasters?

Attend this two-and-a-half-day conference to learn from government officials, engineers and climate change scholars.

Conference Registration
Registration is required for all conference attendees. Registration ($100) includes access to all conference sessions, conference materials, and light breakfasts all three days and lunches and afternoon breaks Monday and Tuesday. A discounted rate ($50) is available for student registrants with valid student ID.

Science and innovation policies are typically justified in terms of a broad range of public values (environmental quality, human health, national security, a skilled workforce, etc.). Yet when it comes to evaluating R&D activities, the assessment approaches generally focus on scientific productivity and economic activity, because they can more easily be measured than public values. As a result, however, science and innovation policy assessments, and decisions based on those assessments, focus on, and run the danger of optimizing, attributes of the research enterprise that don't actually address the public purpose of the R&D. Public Value Mapping offers an alternative, outcomes-oriented, non-economic approach to assessing the effectiveness of science and innovation policies.

The question, who can have access to genetic diagnostics in Western Europe, plays out against the background of an alleged genetic revolution in medicine and reforms considered to take health care delivery away from traditional (welfare) state arrangements. However, the implications of the genetic revolution and institutional reforms in health care are usually studied as separate domains, even though it is in the interaction between them that the most significant changes for the future of European welfare states occur. In my presentation I will therefore investigate how medical applications of genetic technologies and the structures within which they are provided are co-produced. I will discuss examples of how different European cultures integrate genetic diagnostic technologies in their health care provision schemes, thereby producing nationally specific patterns of distributing genetic medicine. I will argue that these patterns contribute to the creation of culturally specific forms of social citizenship that are significant for the public provision of health care in the genetic age.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza. Please RSVP to cspo@asu.edu.

In what ways will technology shape our future?
Please join us during Phoenixs First Friday for a photographic and experiential
journey through the citizens eye to gain insights from the results of the
Futurescape City Tours.
The exhibit opens at 5:00 p.m. Join us at 5:30 p.m. for a presentation of the tour art
followed by a reception and open gallery until 9:00 p.m.
Futurescape City Tours is an urban walking experience where citizens of Phoenix
explore the past, present, and future of the city through multimedia and deliberation.

Will the Nano City become a symbol of equity regarding the distribution of technology? What actions can we take today to encourage greater consideration of equity?

In this talk and discussion I want to reflect on the challenge of applying or embedding CSPO ideas about science and technology in different contexts. Our research can be very critical of institutions across the science policy landscape. We point to entrenched and dubious assumptions, persistent misunderstandings, and failures of the system. We tear down conveniently monolithic concepts such as objectivity or truth. To even understand the CSPO mission for many people requires recognizing and letting go of deeply held assumptions about the nature of scientific and technological progress.

How do we maintain a critical stance, while seeking constructive, helpful ways of implementing our ideas? I'll discuss a few examples from my own experiences over the past year working at the California Ocean Science Trust, an independent boundary organization with close ties to state government and the marine science community. This position has given me a variety of opportunities to work with scientists, foundations, funders, managers, and other NGO professionals on the general challenge of linking science and policy. Through these formal and informal interactions, we are seeking to gradually introduce and embed a new mindset about this challenge.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza. Please RSVP to cspo@asu.edu.

We live in a world where Truth is atomized into smaller, ever partial, ever contextual truths, and where hard facts are imbued with multiple valences. If formidable challenges like climate change and choosing a new president are fought over facts that no one can agree upon, what does democracy mean when we no longer have the abilityif we ever possessed itto anchor collective problem framings and organize public action? Can a democracy even exist if the hard facts and knowledge about our world do not emerge from public reasoning, but rather, through symbolic performances of truthiness and overt exercises of power? The notion of epistemic democracy attempts to go to the heart of the friction between knowledge and power, and brings to the forefront the tensions of subjugating knowledge under politics, and politics under knowledge, with an understanding that democracy is first and foremost a futural category, a promise to be striven for, and not an endpoint. In this workshop, we aim to reflect on the nature of conflict and consensus in democracy, of whether or not democracy necessitates a terra firma of shared knowledge against which to chafe and resist through overt social movements or underground resistances, or galvanize reasoned, robust debate about core challenges facing the country that would lead to epistemically grounded policies. The need for epistemically justified policies, of course, is in and of itself an empirical question that asks if the metrics of legitimacy in public policy are changing.

The workshop on epistemic democracy aims to fulfill the following purposes:

1. Generate rich, provocative, and productive discussion on conceptualizing epistemic democracywhat epistemic democracy is, why it is important, how it fits into existing literature, and what its inherent tensions arethrough guest lectures, ASU student and faculty presentations, as well as a short set of readings to be distributed in advance,

2. Develop future research agendas to forward theories of epistemic democracy and sites of inquiry.

Snacks, Beverages and Breakfast will be provided

CSPO invites science and engineering graduate students, faculty, post-docs and advanced undergraduates to attend a workshop on Energy from Biofuels: Social and Ethical Considerations. The one-day workshop will feature engaging talks on the ethics and complexities of energy transitions, interactive breakout sessions, and perspectives from practitioners in industry. Lunch and coffee will be provided.

In 1974, the National Research Council warned that the Four Corners region of the Colorado Plateau could become a national sacrifice zone if, in order to satisfy the Southwests nearly inexorable demand for energy, it was strip-mined for coal. By that time, however, the wholesale exploitation of the regions coal and groundwater resources was well underway as some of the worlds largest coal mines and power plants, each within the Hopi and Navajo reservation lands, had commenced operations.

Join us as Daniel Higgins weaves together a story that touches on the water-energy nexus, federal requirements for risk assessment, deterministic modeling, regulatory oversight and decision-making on tribal lands, social and environmental justice, and the pathology of natural resource development.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza. Please RSVP to cspo@asu.edu.

Les Johnson, Deputy Manager of the Advanced Concepts Office at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center will discuss the advanced concepts assessment and pre-project planning process at NASA and describe possible future space technology, science and exploration missions the office has been studying (via videoconference).

This event is now full.

In our increasingly fractured civic life, science museums have a unique capacity to convene people across the sociopolitical spectrum. The Science Museum of Minnesota is one institution leveraging this opportunity to engage citizens around science-related social and political issues.

At this event, Science Museum of Minnesota representatives Patrick Hamilton and Robert Garfinkle will discuss the Future Earth Initiative, a major effort to engage the public, policymakers, and scientists around sustainability and global change issues using novel foresight approaches. Their talk will explore how academia and science museums can work together to amplify the work of researchers and engage the public and policymakers in the broad challenges of the future.

Co-sponsored by ASU Global Institute of Sustainability

How do you envision the nano city? Does it excite or frighten you? What actions must we take today to achieve the desired future, and prevent the worst from happening?

Visions of nano-enhanced cities are laden with utopian images of shiny buildings, soaring architectures, and symbiotic human-environmental systems. However, there also are more troubling scenarios of grey goo and robotic spiders that will devour humankind. Join us as we explore a variety of nanotechnologies applicable to city environments with respect to benefits, risks, sustainability, and governance.

In the first enLIGHeNING Lunch of the 2012-13 academic year, Dr. Roberts will discuss an upcoming exhibit planned to open in July 2013 that explores the ways in which art about, and the result of, local environments might provide an alternative means of communicating about complex topics like climate change. He will outline the artists, public installations, programming, and the ways in which his group hopes to study the exhibit as a means for developing tools for public engagement with science. A question and answer session will follow.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza. Please RSVP to cspo@asu.edu.

On Saturday September 15th, 2012, groups of one hundred ordinary citizens in Washington, Boston, Denver and Phoenix will join similar groups across the globe to learn about biodiversity issues, discuss important policy choices, make up their minds, and express their views. The citizen meetings will start at dawn in the Pacific and continue until dusk in the Americas. All meetings will have the same agenda and use the same approach in order to make results comparable and useful for policymakers who will gather the following month in India to discuss future measures for preserving biological diversity.

On Saturday September 15th, 2012, groups of one hundred ordinary citizens in Washington, Boston, Denver and Phoenix will join similar groups across the globe to learn about biodiversity issues, discuss important policy choices, make up their minds, and express their views. The citizen meetings will start at dawn in the Pacific and continue until dusk in the Americas. All meetings will have the same agenda and use the same approach in order to make results comparable and useful for policymakers who will gather the following month in India to discuss future measures for preserving biological diversity.

Agenda
11:00Welcome and Introduction to ECAST Darlene Cavalier, Science Cheerleader
11:10WWViews Process: From Global Warming to Biodiversity
Richard Worthington, Pomona College
11:20CBD & COP 11: US Government Perspectives and Priorities
Barbara DeRosa-Joynt, US State Department
11:35Biodiversity: A Non Governmental Perspective
John Fitzgerald, Society for Conservation Biology
11:45Managing Deliberation and Advocacy in a Dialogue
Carolyn Lukensmeyer, AmericaSpeaks
12:15Real-time Deliberation on National Priority Questions for Biodiversity
Netra Chhetri, Arizona State University
1:15Dissemination and Amplifications of the Results
David Sittenfeld, Museum of Science, Boston
1:30Reflections from the Participants
Gretchen Gano, University of Massachusetts Amherst
1:50Technology Assessment and Citizen Participation
Naba Barkakati, US Government Accountability Office
1:55Results and Next Steps Jeanne Troy, Koshland Science Museum

World Wide Views on Biodiversity
On Saturday September 15th, 2012, groups of one hundred ordinary citizens in Washington, Boston, Denver and Phoenix will join similar groups across the globe to learn about biodiversity issues, discuss important policy choices, make up their minds, and express their views. The citizen meetings will start at dawn in the Pacific and continue until dusk in the Americas. All meetings will have the same agenda and use the same approach in order to make results comparable and useful for policymakers who will gather the following month in India to discuss future measures for preserving biological diversity.

Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) Network
ECAST is a national network of nonpartisan policy research institutions, universities, and science centers working together to conduct balanced technology assessments. Its mission is to support better-informed governmental and societal decisions on complex issues involving science and technology.

WWViews USA Alliance
Arizona Science Center; Colorado School of Mines; Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University; Denver Botanical Garden; Koshland Science Museum; Loka Institute; Museum of Science Boston; Science & Technology Innovation Program at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Science and Technology in Society Program at Virginia Tech; Science Cheerleader; Science, Technology and Society Initiative at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and SciStarter.

Ideally the reform of our health care system is built on the ability to collect and analyze personal health data from various sources, including from electronic health records and clinical trial data. Data driven health care holds out tantalizing promises: the acceleration of basic science, the development of models that aid the translation of discovery into new therapies or the repurposing of old drugs, , new approaches to clinical trials, earlier identification of adverse events for marketed health products, better healthcare through easier access to complete health records by physicians, comparative effectiveness studies that help health care providers payers identify best practices.

The vision is a compelling one. The US government has launched a number of important programs that are trying to nudge, and sometimes push, our biomedical research and health care system into the age of big data, including the 2009 Recovery act which provided $29 billion for the adoption of electronic health systems, the creation of the FDAs Sentinel System, and countless programs and regulations promoting open science practices. There are also enormous commercial incentives to access personal health data.

The promise of health data clashes however, with existing notions of privacy of personal information. The issue is goes far beyond the increasingly common security breaches for health data. The question is whether the institutional foundations on which the privacy of personal information is based can be tailored to a world where health data is used multiple times, for multiple purposes by multiple players. Biomedical data, especially when aggregated, has enormous financial value; and so commercial interests and those of individuals will need some careful rebalancing. In this talk, I will present (1) why health data has value and who is interested in using it, (2) how health data privacy is currently protected and where the system is failing, and (3) where the political battles over health data are being fought.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes this Monday for a viewing of Brother Time, a Kenyan tale on violence and humanity. The documentary explores the interpersonal dynamics spawned by tribal politics in Kenya. The film has been selected for Macon Film Festival, the African World Documentary film festival, the Winnipeg Real to Reel Film Festival and the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival.

A reception featuring light hors doeuvres will begin at 5 p.m. in the Farmers Atrium at the ASU Tempe Campus. The movie will show at 5:30 in ED 328 followed by a question and answer session with CSPO post-doctoral research associate Matt Harsh who co-produced the film.

Join us for this lunchtime talk from one of our international visiting scholars. Lunch will be provided.

Collaboration between universities and industry enhances social welfare, while at the same time creates a dependency of academic science on industry. The economic and role dependency of academic science on industry will produce funding effects, conflicts of interest and entrepreneurial management of universities, which can sabotage the pursuit of reliable knowledge and threaten the reliability of the scientific enterprise. It is critical to scrutinize industrial supports and their additional clauses, make conflicts of interest policy, and figure out the mission of academic science in order to deal with this problem.

Jianying Wen (Winner), associate professor in Jiangsu University, Ph.D in Philosophy of Science and technology, has more than 10 years experience in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), and focuses on the interaction between science, technology and society at the moment.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza. Please RSVP to cspo@asu.edu.

Mark B. Brown is associate professor in the Department of Government at California State University, Sacramento. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Science and Technology Studies, Bielefeld University. He studied at UC Santa Cruz and the University of Gttingen, and received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University. He is the author of Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (MIT Press, 2009), as well as various book chapters and journal articles on the politics of expertise, citizen participation, bioethics, and related topics. He teaches courses on modern and contemporary political theory, democratic theory, and the politics of science, technology, and the environment.

exhibit through Aug. 25, 2012

Science and technology are changing our lives. They are transforming our minds, our possessions and the landscapes we inhabit. In which directions are they heading? What kinds of societies, cities, homes even people will they lead to? Are these the futures that we want?

On March 13, 2012, Arizona State University hosted Emerge, a campus-wide event that united artists, engineers, bioscientists, social scientists, story-tellers and designers to build, draw, write and play with the future. This interactive exhibition at the ASU Art Museum offers Emerges discoveries and creations, giving you an opportunity to get a taste of the futures discussed.

Join us for this lunchtime talk from one of our international visiting scholars. Lunch will be provided.

Raffael Himmelsbach is a PhD candidate in the politics and international studies department of the University of Lausanne and a visiting researcher at CSPO for the academic year 2011/2012. Raffaels PhD research focuses on how Swiss political decision-makers draw on science-based policy advice. More specifically, he is interested in what characterizes the various contexts in which decision-makers drawn on science-based advice and what strategies they employ for selecting and commissioning scientific expertise. In his empirical research he is comparing the demand and production of expertise within decision-making processes of the Swiss stem cell research law, the law on CO2 emission reduction and the reform of the fiscal equalization scheme between the Swiss federal government and the cantons. The talk will provide a short introduction to Swiss science policy and the decision-making process, followed by preliminary results from the stem cell research law case study.

Was Arab Spring social media driven? Was Egypt revolution a Facebook revolution? Was it a people revolution? Do social media promote democracy? Can it support repressive regimes?
Using the case of Arab Spring, particularly the example from Egypt, this presentation calls for a much more critical approach to the promise of social media. The social impacts of the internet/social media, or 'change' in society, are the result of the organic interaction between the technology and social, political, and cultural structures and relationships. Breaking away from both utopian and dystopian tendencies, this presentation shows that our understanding of the actual role of social media in political change should be anchored in relevant history and socio-political context.
Social media should be read beyond its role as a tool but also as space where various networks of communications and interactions that make up of social movement emerge, connect, collapse, and expand.

Students frequently say that they dislike science and criticize science courses for being abstract and unconnected to their lives and concerns. This talk will examine the impact of decontextualized science education and efforts to place science in relevant contexts to increase interest, achievement, and the pursuit of STEM careers. Descriptions of curricular innovations to provide students with science in context will be presented as well as an understanding of the successes and failures of such efforts as a function of cultural compatibility, male and female interests, and the curriculum development process. The talk will be followed by a discussion of these and related issues.

Dale Baker is a science educator in MaryLou Fulton Teachers College. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Educational Research Association as well as a former editor of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Her research focuses on teacher professional development, equity issues in science and teaching and learning in science and engineering.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza. Please RSVP to cspo@asu.edu.

What it means to be human is changing. Emerging technologies are transforming our minds, our relationships, everything we own and the very landscapes in which we live. What kinds of humans will we become? What kinds of humans should we become?
Sponsored by: Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts; The Center for Nanotechnology in Society; ASU Office of the President; Intel; The Prevail Project of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law; Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering; Lightworks

Join us for this lunchtime talk from one of our international visiting scholars. Lunch will be provided and space is limited; RSVP early.

Join us for this lunchtime talk from one of our international visiting scholars. Lunch will be provided.

In recent years, certification programs have proliferated as part of a larger move to promote more environmentally sustainable choices by producers and consumers. Comprising a range of initiatives including eco-labels, rating programs, and voluntary standards, certifications have emerged as one possible alternative to government regulation when it comes to promoting sustainability. Certification programs now exist in a number of sectors including agriculture, energy, forestry, and transportation. For the most part, these programs are voluntary and often overseen by industry groups or non-governmental organizations. Proponents see certification programs as a practical way of encouraging environmental change; critics view them as having limited effectiveness and amounting to little more than greenwashing.

This talk will explore the role that certification programs play in environmental governance. Certifications are seen as a way to encourage environmental action from the bottom-up, i.e., through market mechanisms rather than legislation. Particularly in North America, where there is currently little appetite for government regulation, market-oriented mechanisms are seen (by some) as the more realistic path through which a shift to sustainability might be achieved. The question is whether this will actually happen. While anecdotal evidence suggests eco-certifications can encourage more sustainable choices, there is little hard evidence regarding the effectiveness of these programs. Moreover, the legitimacy of such programs often rests on notions of market-based efficiency, which challenges traditional notions of governance and points to the rising role of non-state authority in environmental policy.

This talk will focus on the intersection of new research objects (historical ontology) and changing information technologies (infrastructure). I ask, can we plan and organize for changing-objects-in-the-world? This research is based on an examination of a successful long-term scientific infrastructure that has been investigating HIV for nearly 30 years, and has weathered transformations in funding regimes, in collaboration technologies, and in its objects of its research: HIV disease. From this success story I extract 'strategies of the long now' used to plan, manage and respond to ongoing changes.

David Ribes is assistant professor in the Communication, Culture and Technology program (CCT) at at Georgetown University. He studies the emerging phenomena of cyberinfrastructure (i.e., networked information technologies in the support of science) and how these are transforming the practice and organization of contemporary knowledge production. A common theme of his research is investigating the sustainability of long-term research organizations. His primary methods are ethnographic and archival. More at http://davidribes.com.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza.

Several decades will pass before the transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy is accomplished. Two endmember scenarios can be envisioned: one with carbon capture and storage and one without. If, as is likely, our path lies closer to the latter, then it will be tempting to cool the over-warmed earth by adding SO2 to the stratosphere. Once the transition is completed, direct capture from the atmosphere will be necessary to bring CO2 back down.

Is competition between and within government R&D agencies a force for innovation and for achieving desired outcomes? Or does competition lead to waste, duplication, and unproductive rivalry? The answer is: it depends. Competition can be a powerful tool leading to desired outcomes if the system of incentives and rewards is structured appropriately. Competition is ubiquitous within the Federal R&D enterprise, and should be examined systematically in order to identify and apply lessons for achieving R&D objectives more quickly and efficiently. Under what conditions might competition serve the greater good and under what conditions might competition serve primarily the interests of the agencies in question?
This presentation will draw on diverse examples of competition within and between government R&D agencies and private-sector R&D entities or that involve directed competition between government and private sector R&D actors. Brief case studies will be presented examining the impact of competition on technological innovation: between the Livermore and Los Alamos laboratories; among NIH, DOE, and Celera in mapping the human genome; and on NASAs compete-and-cooperate approach to Space-X.

Corey Dubin, a national advocate on public-heath reform, will speak on new and emerging threats to the blood supply -- and explore policy alternatives from the past and for the future. Mr. Dubin is president of the Committee of Ten Thousand (http://www.cott1.org/), a leading advocacy group for people with chronic diseases, including hemophilia.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza.

Sustainability requires new ways of combining science and policy. This talk will address how key sustainability challenges require new blends of different domains of discourse. Dr. Jaeger will present how this can only happen through the kind of transformations of ordinary language that unfold in actual conversations geared toward joint practice. He will also examine how those working on sustainability issues at the interface of science and policy face a major challenge: to engage in a degree of voluntary schizophrenia which requires an ability to deal with ambiguity that is rarely trained in academic settings. The talk will conclude with a discussion of these and related issues.

Technology is accelerating changes all around us. Our skincare and beauty products are no exception. New advancements are constantly being made to the skincare products we consider a necessity. Is our safety taken into account with these constant modifications or is there an ugly truth behind the very products that promise us beauty? Find out with Arizona State University professor and Arbonne International Skincare Consultant.

Join the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes
for a quick and edifying lunchtime presentation, discussion and pizza.

Wicked problems like climate change stress both our ordinary sense-making capacities and our most sophisticated policy tools. While there is overwhelming consensus in the climate science community that human-induced climate change is under way, the specific rates and degrees of change as well as the distribution of impacts are still at best incompletely understood. Uncertainty presents not only scientific challenges but social, political and economic quandaries as well. The normal uncertainty that is part of emerging scientific understandings is being used to question the integrity of the science and challenging the role of science in public life. How do citizens and policymakers prepare for climate change in the face of both the uncertainties of local and regional impact and a political climate that challenges the very role of science in public life?

We will delve into a case study of a project conducted in cooperation with the City of Saint Paul to develop scenarios with a diverse range of stakeholders to help them think through the varied, plausible implications of climate change. This project is a unique collaboration between CSPO and the Science Museum of Minnesota, two entities joined by a commitment to civic dialogue and the need for science policy to be better connected to the concerns of broader publics. We believe scenarios can both support policymakers needs and engage the public. We will draw out and reflect upon the strengths and limitations of the approach in supporting new habits of mind that can nimbly navigate alternative futures, ambiguous signals, path dependencies, and take action under conditions of imperfect knowledge. The City of St. Paul case study is also useful in reflecting upon the potential for scenario planning to help large public audiences across the U.S. to grapple with the complexities and uncertainties of climate change.

Recent scientific breakthroughs, such as nanotechnology, are changing the world as we know it. Gold nanoshells, for both imaging and targeting tumors, have the potential to revolutionize cancer treatments. At the same time, nanotechnology has raised concerns about what it means to create and manipulate materials at the molecular scale that do not occur in nature. With over 1,000 nano-based consumer end products entering the market in the past few years, consumer advocates, academics, and policy makers are scrambling to weigh the risks and benefits of this new technology and its applications. How do we form opinions even though most of us lack a comprehensive scientific understanding of emerging scientific fields? How do we use our personal values and moral standards to make sense of scientific facts? And why does all of this matter for the global leadership role of the U.S.--both economically and technologically--in a rapidly changing world? this talk outlines how we as a society make sense of sometimes controversial technologies that have the potential to transform virtually all aspects of our everyday lives.

Co-sponsored by the School of Politics and Global Studies

The Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, along with other leading policy groups, is pleased to announce Energy Innovation 2011a landmark conference highlighting how America can spur and support clean energy innovation.

The conference will be held in Washington, DC on November 17 at the Washington Marriott at Metro Center (Grand Ballroom, 775 12th Street, NW) from 9:00AM to 4:30PM

We will build from last year's successful Energy Innovation 2010 conference, which helped bolster the case for developing inexpensive and clean energy technology, creating a robust green economy through innovation. The central question this year is how to accomplish all of this given the stark budget realities.

Once again we will bring together the nation's leading policy thinkers, public officials from the state, regional, and federal level as well as experts from academia and top journalists for a candid, provocative and enlightening exchange of views. Among the speakers will be Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) and Arun Majumdar, Director of ARPA-E and Acting Under Secretary for Energy at DOE.

Panelists will delve into how we can create a green economy by implementing smart public policies that make clean energy cheap through innovation. Please see the full conference agenda, complete with panel descriptions and speaker biographies.

While we expect a great turnout for the event, if there are other colleagues who you believe would enjoy attending, please feel free to share the conference. Registration for the event is required.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Communicating science to the general public is difficult. But communicating science policy creates even more complexity and challenge for many reasons including the public's incomplete understanding of the ways in which policy is conceived, shaped and adapted, how economics are fused with potential actions and how policy outcomes are evaluated and measured. Compounding the problem, science policy scholars are often not experienced nor necessarily comfortable talking to the general public. Complicating matters is the fact that science writers are generally more interested in reporting applied science and not policy, of which they may be less unaware.

We will discuss the "To Think, To Write, To Publish," a program that bridged those multiple gaps by establishing 12 collaborative 2-person teams comprised of a "next generation" science policy scholar and a "next generation" science writer--to learn creative nonfiction/narrative techniques and to write a creative nonfiction essay together, utilizing the scholar's research. The results: Writers learned much more about the process and importance of research and the key influence of policy--and scholars learned about how to utilize creative nonfiction storytelling techniques to reach a general audience and make policy more accessible. A well-established policy magazine which heretofore had not published narrative has so far accepted for publication the first group of those essays. An online creative nonfiction social action journal will soon be started by one of the program's participants. A follow-up and expanded program is in the planning stages awaiting funding.

Harry Goldstein is Editorial Director, Digital for IEEE Spectrum, the flagship magazine of the 400,000-member IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). His responsibilities range from acquiring and editing articles on topics as diverse as software patent law and carbon trading to directing the development of new digital platforms such as Spectrum's upcoming Robots iOS app and tablet magazine to overseeing the redesign of the Spectrum Web site, due to a re-launch as fully HTML5-compliant in 4Q 2012. In the last two years, the Spectrum Web site has garnered two Jesse H. Neal Awards for Best Web Site (2009 and 2010) and three National Magazine Award (Digital) nominations. Goldstein hails from Louisvllle, KY, earned a bachelors in English from Carleton College in Northfield, MN in 1989 and later a masters in creative writing from City College of New York. He has been with Spectrum for 10 years and has previously been managing editor of John Wiley & Sons Technical Insights newsletter group and managing editor of Civil Engineering magazine. Proud father of one, he lives in Minneapolis, Minn. and commutes to New York monthly.

Professional Science Masters in Science and Technology Policy: One-year program for recent graduates and early career professionals. Become an analyst who can work alongside elected officials, business leaders, and scientists and engineers; a writer and communicator who can convey the human stories wrapped up in complex technical issues; a manager who can advance research and development while also improving governance, promoting justice, and creating better lives and livelihoods.

Science Outside the Lab-A Policy (Dis)Orientation: An intensive two week hands-on and on-location summer session for science and engineering graduate students. Meet the people who fund, regulate, shape, critique, and study science: government officials, lobbyists, staffers, regulators, journalists, academics, museum curators, etc.

PhD in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology: A highly inter-disciplinary graduate degree program at one of the largest centers for research, education and outreach on the societal aspects of emerging science and technologies. Working alongside and in dialogue with scientists, engineers, policymakers, and the public, doctoral students ask hard questions about the conceptual foundations of science and technology and their meaning and application in society.

Science, Policy and Citizenship Program: Four week policy simulation program introducing High School age students to the complexity of decision-making at the intersection of science and citizenship. By deliberating with each other, real world experts and decision makers, students gain hands on experience in the political processes society uses to deal with competing objectives, diverse interests and conflicting values.

There is an increasing push to offer scientists and engineers new forms of education in the social and ethical implications of research. A number of research groups and individuals across the country are currently developing their own approaches to delivering this material to scientists and engineers. This Congress will bring together a wide array of these educators to share the programs, materials, assessment methods, and experience they have already developed and to collaborate on new strategies.

There is no registration fee, but you must register to attend.

The Congress is jointly sponsored by ASU's Center for Nanotechnology in Society; Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes; National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network; and the National Science Foundation.

The third annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET)is being co-organized by the Centers for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) and at University of California, Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB).

Scientific Social Movements and scientific elites are primary motors of scientific innovation. This talk will examine these poorly understood sources of scientific change. It will examine the inner workings of scientific social movements by considering the underappreciated importance of emotions for shaping the birth of creative ideas and the management of skepticism within the elite groups which advance them. It will also consider social stratification in the global scientific community by examining the work lives, social characteristics and research strategies of the world's .01% most highly cited environmental scientists. The talk will conclude with a discussion of these and related issues.

John N. Parker is a sociologist and Fellow at Arizona State Universitys Barrett Honors College. His research focuses on scientific and intellectual social movements, small group dynamics in research collaborations, emotion and creativity, scientific elites, scientific careers and scientific work life. He has also written about scientific leadership, boundary organizations, scientific synthesis, and current attempts to integrate the environmental and social sciences.

Dan Gillmor, an internationally recognized author and leader in new media and citizen-based journalism, is the founding director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and the Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship with ASUs Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Science Cafes are informal discussions that bring together members of the community and university scientists to discuss how science and technology can change the future.

Some countries are leveraging design (such as product or industrial design) at the national level to enhance their economic competitiveness. For others, design remains an untapped resource that could be another piece in the innovation puzzle. The United States, for example, does not have a design policy despite recent and past attempts to create one. With this talk I will give a brief overview of how other countries use design at the national level and offer a review of the past efforts at forming one here in the US. I will then examine the lack of a US design policy, particularly within the context of our greater R&D enterprise.

Bring your lunch.

Many experts argue that we need to change a number of our large technological systems in order to adapt to the increasing number of challenges our society faces. There are questions about the sustainability of everything from our energy systems to transportation networks. But changing such things is never an easy task. This is partially a result of a phenomenon known as path dependence, a situation in which initial conditions establish a trajectory, making changes or reversal increasingly difficult.

Research on path dependence is critical for understanding how institutions can be adapted to address global change, both in the sense of understanding why change is so difficult in some situationsand what can be done about itand understanding how negative trajectories can be avoided. This presentation will explore how the existence of path dependent processes increases considerably the need for anticipatory governance. It will analyze a few historical examples to demonstrate how early and broad assessment of technologies and situations can help promote more beneficial path dependence.

The effectiveness and safety of vaccines continue to be fervently debated. Can vaccines help us overcome the world's most urgent public health challenges? Or is there reason to be cautious about their use? Hear what Arizona State University researchers have to say.

lunch will be provided

Technologies service many human needs. Socially beneficial technologies can also assist in resolving some of the worlds most pressing problems: climate change; access to safe drinking water; quality housing; universal health care. Often a technology already exists, awaiting to be applied. In other cases it is within grasp given appropriate prioritisation. This paper considers approximately 100 theories of and approaches to technology innovation and adoption regarding the question, How is the failure of socially beneficial technology explained? Approaches include legal, regulatory, political, philosophical, sociological, usage, psychological, technical, economic, commercial, and marketing. This paper creates a framework of six categories in order to classify and compare the theories. It then proposed further research steps to examine the question.

Co-sponsored by CSPO and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society

A 2-week policy immersion program in Washington, D.C., for science and engineering graduate students.

A two-week policy immersion program in Washington, D.C., for science and engineering graduate students.

This event is part of a series presented by Arizona State University to help policymakers and the public explore the societal implications of advanced technology, and the various ways we, as a society, can attempt to manage that technology. Very often, some of the best ways to manage science and technology do not derive from the governments, corporations, or associations, but rather arise organically from society itself. Art and religion stem from the mores and needs of a society and, in turn, help to shape those same mores, desires, and needs. Art and religion aid in shaping the way the public perceives, experiences, and uses science and technology, and those ideas are conveyed to decision-makers.

How powerful are these social forces in creating more tangible forms of governance like regulation and legislation? Our panelists will address this and other questions and engage with the audience for what promises to be an exciting and informative evening.

This event will be webcast at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cspo.

A two-week policy immersion program in Washington, D.C., for science and engineering graduate students.

Killing germs has become a national obsession. But are these chemicals really safe for human health and the environment? Can we really be germ-free?

David Winton is a founding partner of Winton duPont Films, a film and television production company with offices in New York and San Francisco. His company produces programs for leading broadcast and cable networks, including PBS, The History Channel, National Geographic, and TechTV, as well as Fortune 100 companies, advertising agencies, and not-for-profit organizations. Recent broadcast credits include Executive Producer of Suburban Surveillance/Suburban Jihad and Interrogating Saddam for the National Geographic Channel (2011/10); Producer/Director of The Unabomber, National Geographic Television and Film (2008); Executive Producer The Scrap House, National Geographic (2007); Producer/Director of Learning the Hard Way, Discovery (2006); Producer/Director of The Crash, The History Channel (2004); Executive Producer of Big Thinkers: Portraits of American Scientists and Visionaries, TechTV/Spike (2000-2002); Producer/Director Code Rush (2000), PBS. Winton is a graduate of Harvard College and lives in San Francisco with his wife, Charlotte Vaughan.

At this event, Allenby will discuss and sign copies of The Techno-Human Condition (www.technohuman.net), his new book written with co-author and CSPO co-director Dan Sarewitz, which explores what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological complexity and change.

The lecture and book-signing is supported by the "Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism" project. Event co-sponsors include the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Consortium for Science and Policy outcomes, Fulton Colleges of Engineering and the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics.

In 2004, a California ballot initiative dedicated three billion dollars over ten years to human embryonic stem cell research in the state. This talk will explore how California's experiment produced not merely a re-evaluation of the social contract between science, the state, and its citizens, but of the normative and institutional conditions under which science could properly be called a public enterprise.

The question of how to best manage scientific and technological potential becomes more complex by the day. This panel will address the question: How does one engage with an unbounded community of independently funded scientists addressing complex research with sometimes potentially perilous consequences?

Light refreshments will be provided. This event is sponsored by the ASU Office of the President; the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO); Laura Dress, director of Community PAC for the Pink Army Cooperative and fellow at the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Biology and Society, School of Life Sciences, and Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU

PhD Dissertation Defense for School of Public Affairs
Committee: David Guston, Daniel Sarewitz, and Barry Bozeman

CSPO co-director, Dan Sarewitz, will present his Top Ten list regarding the "military industrial complex." He will explore the idea that the institutional arrangements that brought humanity to the edge of self-annihilation now afford humanity its best opportunity to pursue a more sustainable energy future.

This talk will be streamed live at 12 Noon MT on CSPO's Ustream channel [http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cspo].

Dissertation Defense for PhD in Sustainability

Seo's presentation will show the recent context requiring a new concept of risk universe. She will explain her approach to establishing new concepts of risk and evaluation standards based on the novel features of nanomedicine.

Eric Roston has worked as a journalist and science writer for several influential publications and is currently Executive Editor for energyNOW! Rostons understanding of energy- and climate-related issues is rooted in his experience with government, academia and various news publications. He most recently served as a senior analyst with the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

Do you want to make a difference in the world, applying your knowledge and skills to meeting real-world challenges? Do you want to help solve complex problems like energy, climate change, public health, or national security? Are you interested in a career in business, government, or the non-profit sector with a focus on policy and/or communication? ASUs one-year Professional Science Masters in Science and Technology Policy is for you, and is now available to students and professionals in the Washington, D.C., area. Join us for refreshments, meet our faculty and find out more about the program. You also are invited to stay for a talk at 6pm by journalist and science writer Eric Roston.

What would it mean to our families, cities and environment if Arizona experienced a major disaster like Hurricane Katrina or Japans recent earthquake? Join us to discuss what risks the state faces and the challenges of preparing to cope with widespread emergency situations.

Mitchell Joachim is a leader in ecological design and urbanism. He is a co-founder at Planetary ONE + Terreform ONE and an Associate Professor at NYU, and he previously was the Frank Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto. His experience includes being an architect at Gehry Partners and Pei Cobb Freed. Joachim has been awarded fellowships at Moshe Safdie and Associates and Martin Society for Sustainability, MIT, and he is currently a 2011 TED Senior Fellow. He won the Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability and Humanity, the History Channel and Infiniti Excellence Award for City of the Future, and Time Magazine's Best Invention of 2007, Compacted Car with MIT Smart Cities. His project, Fab Tree Hab, has been exhibited at MoMA and widely published. He was chosen by Wired magazine for "The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To," and Rolling Stone magazine honored him in "The 100 People Who Are Changing America." Joachim earned his Ph.D. at MIT, his MAUD at Harvard University, his M.Arch. at Columbia University, and his BPS at SUNY Buffalo with honors.

Mitchell Joachim is a leader in ecological design and urbanism. He is a co-founder at Planetary ONE + Terreform ONE and an Associate Professor at NYU, and he previously was the Frank Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto. His experience includes being an architect at Gehry Partners and Pei Cobb Freed. Joachim has been awarded fellowships at Moshe Safdie and Associates and Martin Society for Sustainability, MIT, and he is currently a 2011 TED Senior Fellow. He won the Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability and Humanity, the History Channel and Infiniti Excellence Award for City of the Future, and Time Magazine's Best Invention of 2007, Compacted Car with MIT Smart Cities. His project, Fab Tree Hab, has been exhibited at MoMA and widely published. He was chosen by Wired magazine for "The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To," and Rolling Stone magazine honored him in "The 100 People Who Are Changing America." Joachim earned his Ph.D. at MIT, his MAUD at Harvard University, his M.Arch. at Columbia University, and his BPS at SUNY Buffalo with honors.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Biology and Society, School of Life Sciences, and Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU

Online activism in the Middle East did not begin in Tahrir Square on January 25, but has been evolving for many years. In this lecture, Merlyna Lim will chronicle how the Internet, including social media, facilitated the emergency of new networks of opposition to the ruling regime of Egypt, and how such networks and their converging narratives were translated into mass actions that led to a relatively peaceful overflow a dictatorship. The lecture will be followed by discusion with Chad Haines. This event will be webcast at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cspo.

Skepticism about the value of scientific inquiry abounds in many parts of Africa, a consequence of renewed fervor for traditional forms of African self-government, which have experienced revival in the past twenty years with the breakdown of statist projects in Africa and the fitful expansion of democratic politics. Anti-science attitudes stand behind many seemingly unrelated developments and reflect paradoxical consequences of growing citizen power in the sub-Saharan. In this presentation, Zachary will argue that more inputs in support of African science will help, but much less than proponents expect. Anti-science attitudes in Africa are deeply rooted and they display curious parallels with similar movements in the United States. The evidence suggests that merely dismissing science skeptics in Africa as irrational or irrelevant likely strengthens their social standing. As a first step toward tamping down Africas science wars, Africa's science skeptics must be understood on their own terms.

What is the Smart Grid? What are some of the energy challenges that are on the Nation's forefront and what advancements are underway to address them? How does semi-conductor technology impact Cloud Computing and power consmption?

This conference, sponsored by the Center for Law, Science & Innovation at the Sandra Day OConnor College of Law at ASU, in partnership with the law firm of Polsinelli Shughart PC, the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU and the ABA Section of Science & Technology Law, will examine recent trends and challenges in regulation and risk management of nanotechnology. Top national and international nanotechnology experts from government, industry, non-governmental organizations, the insurance industry, and academia will be featured. More information and registration at http://lsi.law.asu.edu/nanoregulation/.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Biology and Society, School of Life Sciences, and Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU

A citizens deliberation project with high school students culminating in a mock hearing before an interagency panel. Video available at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13163371.

Taking an innovation systems perspective, Munch Andersen interrogates visions for a green nano city. By linking such visions with a more general discussion of evolutionary perspectives of nanotechnology, she explores the intersections between technology development, sustainable development, economic development, and urban ecology.

The more things change, the more they stay the same? Come explore the bricks and mortar of how all sorts of materials have been used across the centuries.

Biopolitics is the most fundamental domain of power; control at the level of life itself. By defining the vital qualities of persons through biological knowledge, states and institutions can delineate social order and status. This talk will compare three scientific means of gaining knowledge about the mind, and the dimensions through which they exercise biopower. Intelligence testing, pharmaceuticals and brain imaging demand and justify distinct hierarchies of power, debate over the merits and uses of these knowledge-producing technologies constitute biopolitics. Biopolitics and STS scholarship are naturally complementary, and usefully inform each other.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Biology and Society, School of Life Sciences, and Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU

We are living in the Anthropocene, an era in which global change induced by human activities is occurring at rates that are unprecedented in our history. Yet we have only recently become aware of our power as a species to influence and modify our environment on a planetary scale, and this awareness has not penetrated deeply into societys collective knowledge and behavior.

The Worldviews Network is a collaboration of institutions that have pioneered Earth systems research, education and evaluation methods. The network is creating innovative approaches for engaging the American public in dialogues about human-induced global changes by leveraging the power of immersive scientific visualization environments at informal science centers across the U.S. Digital planetariums can simulate cosmic phenomena at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, allowing a gods eye view of Earth. This disembodied perspective engages viewers visual intelligence to reflect on humanitys place in the cosmos. The Worldviews Network is turning the power of immersive visualization into a revolutionary tool for innovation in ecological literacy programming.

On the basis of a detailed analysis of institutionalized forms of advisory bodies in the German government it can be shown that different organizational forms are serving particular functions and have an impact on the quality of advice as well as its impact on policy making. There is no 'one solution' to the problem of matching the diverging logics of science and politics. Video available at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/12574214.

What are the effects of Craig Venter's media campaigns? What is the longer term impact of top scientific journals catering to the mass media? Opinions are divided about the effects of 'playing' the media on science, and there is little hard evidence of such effects. In order to get beyond anecdotal accounts it is necessary to develop an analytical framework to allow systematic studies and a critical interpretation of recent developments. Video available at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/12555736.

Biophysics is broadly recognized as an interdisciplinary field of life science, situated at the intersection of physics and biology and featuring advanced physical instrumentation for problems in molecular biology. This study looks into how the domain differences between biology and physics are instituted and reconfigured in a single molecule biophysics (SMB) laboratory at ASU. Luk will present ethnographic findings from her yearlong participantobservationengagement fieldwork and report how laboratory scientists at different stages use different tactics to reason with the intractable data. In the process of making sense of the epistemic cultures of an interdisciplinary domain at the laboratory floor, she has revealed that an interdisciplinary laboratory offers a broader room to incorporate issues and concerns of social and ethical significance.

Philosophy can contribute to current practices of anticipatory reflection on science and technology through an epistemological and moral analysis of expectations on emerging technologies. Lucivero will present a way of doing this by analyzing expectations in research on medical diagnostics. The discussion will focus on some preliminary results of a lab engagement study, conducted at the Centre for Innovations in Medicine at the Biodesign Institute, ASU, under the banner of the SocioTechnical Integration Research (STIR) project.

What new challenges do new technologies present to our water quality? What do we suspect, what do we know, and what can we do about it?

CSPO and AAAS are co-sponsoring a seminar commemorating the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhowers farewell address. Eisenhower's speech is mainly remembered for his warning of the perils of a "military-industrial complex." Less widely known, but no less important, was his caution a few sentences later about "the danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." This seminar will explore the historical context and current relevance of Eisenhower's worries.