Author: Jonny Hankins

Jonathan's Author Bio: Co Editor of the International Handbook on Responsible Innovation, and author of Responsible Innovation, A Narrative Approach, Jonny works for the Bassetti Foundation in Milan publishing articles on innovation and responsibility on their website and in academic and trade journals and also blogging about his interests. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Responsible Innovation and member of the the Virtual Institute of Responsible Innovation

Ninth Annual Winter School on Emerging Technologies

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Do you fit the requirements for the Ninth Annual Winter School on Emerging Technologies: Accelerating Impactful Scholarship supported by The National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure January 3-10, 2022?

The National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Coordinating Office is now supporting the winter school, run by the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, covering fees and accomodation costs..

The Winter School will give junior scholars and scientists an introduction to and practical experience with methods and theory for better understanding the social dimensions of emerging technologies, focused on the broad notion of impact with an aim to explore ways for participants to increase and diversify the impact of their work.

This year’s program will begin with a series of interactive sessions with faculty members to explore a variety of ways in which research can have a positive impact beyond the specific studies involved. The program will conclude with a multi-day immersive “sandpit” experience, where participants will form teams and pitch projects aimed at increasing the impact of scholarship. Successful teams will be awarded funding to help them implement their ideas over the year following the program.

Ample work time and breaks are built into the Winter School schedule to encourage participants to guide their own learning experience throughout the week. Mentorship sessions with attending faculty will also be offered.

The Winter School is an immersive experience for scholars to share their own unique research and learn from peers and experts. The faculty at the Winter School will offer theoretical framings, analytical tools and hands-on lessons in how social science, natural science, and engineering research on emerging technologies can have a greater impact on the world.

Participating in the Winter School will enrich your networks and provide ample opportunities to share ideas, collaborate with peers, and develop proposals to enhance the impact of your work.

Applicants should be advanced graduate students or recent PhDs (post-doc or untenured faculty within three years of completing a PhD at time of application) with an expressed interest in studying emerging technologies such a nanotechnology, robotics, synthetic biology, geoengineering, artificial intelligence, etc.

Applicants may come from any discipline and must be demonstrably proficient in English.

The program will spend its ninth consecutive year at Saguaro Lake Ranch in Mesa, AZ with access to Sonoran Desert hiking, kayaking on Saguaro Lake, horseback riding and relaxing by the Salt River.

The program fees for accepted students will be covered by the NNCI including seven nights at Saguaro Lake Ranch, meals and local transportation from Tempe, Arizona. Participants will be responsible for their own travel to Phoenix, Arizona and should arrive before 1pm on January 3rd.

To access an application and learn more about the 2022 Winter School program visit the dedicated website. Participants are requested to be fully vaccinated before they arrive at the ranch.

 DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS IS MONDAY NOVEMBER 8, 2021. Spread the word!

Art in Responsible Innovation, Maurizio Montalti in Conversation

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Long ago, back in February of 2015, I wrote this post about Maurizio Montalti and his work with fungus.

Montalti produces various materials in what he calls a collaboration between living organisms, compostable materials that can be used to replace plastics and chemical based products.

Since I first met him he has begun to produce a host of materials on an industrial scale with the foundation of his company MOGU, and earlier this summer I was fortunate enough to catch up with him again and record the video interview you find below, part of my Art in Responsible Innovation series for the Bassetti Foundation.

Maurizio is a designer, scientist and artist whose works is extremely innovative, research and experiment based and perched on the border between art, design and biology.  He has been active in promoting responsibility within innovation throughout his career, with lots of ideas around sustainability and science communication and the role of science in society.

Learn more about this intriguing character and his work through the video and podcast below.

De-extinction!

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De-extinction

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the Earth BioGenome project in which I suggest that the idea of the project collecting and sequencing all of life was aimed at working towards being able to ‘de-extinct’ species that may be lost in the coming years.

Well this week the Guardian UK newspaper has run an article specifically about de-extinction, leading with the title Firm Raises $15m to Bring Back Woolly Mammoth from Extinction.

Now headlines don’t tell the whole story as we know, and what the article appears to be saying is that scientists (and I will come back to who) want to create an elephant-mammoth hybrid by making embryos in the laboratory that carry mammoth DNA. The plan is to begin by taking skin cells from Asian elephants and reprogram them into more versatile stem cells that carry mammoth DNA.

This could lead to the hybrids having long hair, larger fat depositis and other characteristics that would allow the animals to live in cold environments, rather like a mammoth.

The article has a subtitle though that makes for even more interesting reading: Reintroducing large animals can help restore ecosystems.

This is actually a link to an article that talks about the introduction of wolves and other non-extinct species into environments that suit their lifestyles, although the scientists proposing to do this with mammoths argue that their introduction may help to restore the degraded arctic tundra habitat and help in fighting global warming.

As we might imagine however none of the above comes without criticism, with other scientists arguing that these environmental claims might be baseless and the problems of producing such a hybrid aminal should not be underestimated (in technological terms).

George Church

Now to come back to the scientists. The money has been raised by bioscience and genetics company Colossal, co-founded by Ben Lamm, a tech and software entrepreneur, and George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School who has pioneered new approaches to gene editing. I don’t know much about Lamm, but George Church is a very interesting character. He has been at the forefront of all types of genetic research for many decades, raising plenty of controversy along the way.

He is a pioneer who has pushed scientific boundaries, and I had the pleasure of meeting him and sharing lunch back in 2012. I have to admit I was a bit frightened though. What do you say in such presence? There doesn’t appear to be any box to think out of for him!

This seems like an incredible project to me, to the point that I don’t know what to think. I grew up in the era of the Jurassic park films! Will I one day look out to see a pterodactyl fly past?