GES Center Lectures, NC State University

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

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Global food production is an enormously complex enterprise crossing every conceivable barrier from geographical borders to scientific disciplines. Challenges to production that threaten our ability to feed the world’s growing population are multifactorial and will require the integration of many fields of knowledge and skill sets to discover sustainable solutions. It requires the synthesis of discipline-specific theories, protocols, and tools to create new models and a common language to address complicated research questions. A systems understanding of development and adaptation at the level of cells, tissues, organisms, and ecosystem together with the development of predictive models is needed to achieve translational research. This discussion will be focused on: 1- the use of techniques derived from biological, mathematical, and engineering science to unravel molecular mechanisms that regulate the growth and development of multicellular organisms; and 2- how the fundamental understanding of biological systems and relationships at a multi-scale level is central to translate this knowledge to engineering plants with enhanced agronomic function.

Dr. Ross Sozzani joined NC State in 2013 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Synthetic and Systems Biology. An associate professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, Sozzani researches the molecular mechanisms that regulate stem cell fate specification and maintenance within the Arabidopsis root, and translates this knowledge to engineering plants with enhanced agronomic function using the tools of synthetic biology. Her goal is to gain a coherent qualitative and quantitative understanding of stem cell maintenance at the system level. In addition to revealing the molecular pathways that stem cells employ, this research will help to better understand why stem cells, in both plants and animals, give rise to specialized cells at all.

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

Website | Twitter

Julius Tillery is the founder of BlackCotton.Us and he will discuss his journey as a 5th generation African American cotton farmer in Northampton. In his journey, founding BlackCotton.Us company that tagline: Cotton is our Culture. Julius will detail why the culture of cotton production is important to be known for the marketplace.

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Julius Tillery is a 5th Generation life-long row crop commodities producer (cotton, soybeans, peanuts) from Northeastern, North Carolina. Julius is a rural economic development advocate and is also known for his entrepreneurial business role as Founder of BlackCotton.Us.

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

Website | Twitter

Growing meat directly from plants, microbes, and animal cells will allow us to build a food system that is better for human, animal, and planetary health. However, catalyzing this paradigm shift is a vast, multidisciplinary effort that requires scientists, engineers, and other innovators from disciplines ranging from tissue engineering and synthetic biology to computational science and chemical engineering. Join The Good Food Institute’s Amy Huang to explore the state of plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation-derived meat research and learn how universities can accelerate our transition to a better food system.

Amy Huang is the University Innovation Manager at The Good Food Institute. As a member of GFI’s science and technology team, Amy works with students and faculty around the world to turn universities into hubs for alternative protein research and education. In addition to working with scientists and engineers to address priority white spaces in plant-based and cultivated meat technologies, she focuses on bringing diverse stakeholders together through the formation of student groups, global scientific communities, and interdisciplinary research centers. Amy graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in Economics and Global Health.

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

Website | Twitter

The second AgBioFEWS cohort visited Eastern NC this summer talking with farmers, stakeholders, faculty, and extension agents. The goal of the trip was to gain a deeper understanding of agriculture in Eastern NC. The cohort will present on the insights they gained focused on three major themes: land and power, agbiotech, and decision making. These insights will be used to inform the development of the cohort’s proposals.

AgBioFEWS Fellows are Ph.D. candidates across multidisciplinary fields of study collaboratively examining the science, policy, and public engagement aspects and impacts of Agricultural Biotechnology on Food, Energy, and Water. In addition to their primary graduate program, Fellows also earn a graduate minor in Genetic Engineering and Society. Cohort 2 includes: Jabeen Ahmad, Jaime Choi, Salvador Cruz Matus, Andrew Hardwick, Dana Mugisa, Sandy Ramsey, Delecia Utley, and Sebastian Zarate.

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium GES Mediasite - See videos, full abstracts, speaker bios, and slides https://go.ncsu.edu/ges-mediasite Twitter - https://twitter.com/GESCenterNCSU

Final public colloquium of the Spring semester.

How do we know our work is carried in the best interest of all involved? Even with our best intentions, both personally and socially, we can cause harm. How can we build a framework for action with an eye toward intention, care, and repair? This presentation brings to the Genetic Engineering and Society Center an ethical framework rooted in the Right Use of Power. Power is the capacity to have an influence, effect a change, or transform situations. Ethical decision-making can come in two forms, ordinary and complex. Both kinds are essential to deepening trust and maintaining relationships. Both involve an integration of personal integrity with professional responsibility. Most ethical decisions, however, are made moment-to-moment, based on our personal integrity, making it difficult to meet professional responsibility standards. This presentation reviews common misunderstandings of power as limited to unwanted oppression, control, and violence. Power can also enable responsibility, guidance, support, empowerment of others, and care. Power can reflect core values of compassion, wisdom, clarity, and connection. Power can be used skillfully, consciously, responsibly, and with care, or carelessly, selfishly, and destructively. The difference lies in using power appropriately, a skill that must be learned. Our clarity around the use of power is often complicated by shame and blame, two characteristics that are often at work in institutional settings.

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Tenku Ruff is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest and past President of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association who trained for five years in Zen monasteries in Japan, along with additional training in North America. Tenku holds a Master of Divinity degree from Maitripa College, a Tibetan Buddhist graduate school in Portland, Oregon. She is also a board certified chaplain (BCC) with the Association of Professional Chaplains and works as a hospice chaplain and a palliative care chaplain. Tenku brings to discussions of ethics in Genetic Engineering and Society sustained interests in interfaith dialogue and equity and inclusion. These interests that led her to undergo Right Use of Power training with Cedar Barstow.

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

Organized by the AgBioFEWS Cohorts

Link

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

Recent gene-editing technologies are heralded by proponents as a revolution for developing gene-edited foods (GEFs) while critics demand increased governance and scrutiny of potential societal impacts. Like other food and agriculture technologies, realizing GEF’s potential will depend on whether the public accepts it. Proponents want to ensure that GEF avoid the intense public controversy that GMOs faced, which they argue resulted in ‘burdensome’ regulations, trade restrictions, limited international production and trade of GMOs, and diminished opportunity to realize the benefits of GMOs. This history also uncovered that efforts aimed at educating the public about the science of food technologies does not necessarily diminish skepticism or mistrust.

Instead, trust in GEF will be informed by factors that extend beyond technical risks and benefits where many proponents now acknowledge the importance of trust and the limitations of the information deficit model. Thus, proponents see an opportunity to shift priorities away from the obstinate risk and safety debates of the GMO era, and instead focus efforts to garner social license through alternative means to establish public trust and acceptance. However, consumer and environmental advocacy groups argue that GEF poses significant public acceptance challenges due to its association with GMOs, scientific complexity, and social, environmental, and ethical concerns. US government agencies including the USDA, FDA, and others are also reviewing and revising policy relevant to safety and labeling of GEF products. As this area continues to grow in attention, and more products arrive to market, proponents and critics will contend with one another to shape the future of the technology. Thus, early messaging about GEF represents a transformative symbolic and politicized locus where message attributes serve ideological mechanisms created by stakeholders in competition. The prioritized communication from proponents and critics may well be the mechanism that drives how GEF will come to be understood by the larger citizenry and will influence how it will be evaluated and governed.

This presentation reviews recent data across two studies (still in review) in this domain. The first study reports findings from qualitative interviews and provides a typology of discordant priorities from proponents and critics related to trust and acceptance of GEFs. The second study is a content analysis that identifies and compares how media messages portray potential risks and benefits and regulation of GEFs across the US and EU. Together, these studies highlight contemporary shifts in proponent approaches to cultivating public trust, and acceptance of products in the commercial marketplace.

Dr. Christopher Cummings’ work focuses on advancing public engagement with science, developing risk communication theory, and improving public health decision making across the life span. An experienced social scientist and communication campaign scholar, Dr. Cummings uses a variety of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods, and his work has been featured in more than 40 applied science and health venues, including the Journal of Risk Research; Regulation and Governance; Nanotoxicology; PLOS One; Science, Technology, & Human Values; and Climate Research, among others. Outside of academia, Dr. Cummings also consults with multiple government agencies across the Asia-Pacific on health risk communication issues, including dengue fever surveillance and response (Sri Lanka and Singapore), obesity and nutrition access (New Zealand), vaccine communication (Singapore, Australia, and United States), and public engagement with nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and geoengineering (Australia, United States, and Singapore). He also consults privately with various Fortune 500 companies on leadership training, strategic planning, and risk communication initiatives.

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

Overview of Pairwise and their mission to build a healthier world through better fruits and vegetables by bringing new varieties to consumers. Insights into using gene-editing to make healthy produce a more attractive choice, and some of the regulatory considerations.

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Dan Jenkins has 20+ years’ experience working in the food and agriculture industry and serves as the Regulatory Strategy and Quality Lead for Pairwise. Prior to this Dan was the Managing Director and Chief of Staff of the Agricultural Section of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) trade association in Washington DC. Dan also lead Monsanto’s Regulatory team in Washington DC overseeing all domestic chemistry and biotech crop approvals across FDA, EPA and USDA, and at the beginning of his career, worked in pesticide commercial sales, as well as R&D, for Dow AgroSciences. Dan earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a Master of Science degree in Entomology and Applied Ecology from the University of Delaware and his Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School.

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

See also: Art’s Work/Genetic Futures 2.0

This event premiers Richard Pell’s CODEX ENTROPIA, a dystopian epic in the form of a 3D informational film. Using archival stereoscopic images that document the work of Western Pennsylvania laborers, the film narrates an alternative history that speaks to the entanglement of biological life forms, computational data, and political ideology. The film screening will be accompanied by Q&A with the artist and a brief response from historian and philosopher of science Michael Dietrich.

CODEX ENTROPIA is a short (9 min) 3D Sci-Fi Experimental Documentary. It tells the story of a massive geologic formation that contains the complete library of an ancient civilization who developed computing technologies using only well-trained animals. Told through a psychedelic found-footage slideshow, with soundtrack by Jason Martin. Produced entirely from historic stereoscopic photographs, the film will be presented in anaglyph (red/green) 3D, so please make sure you get the glasses to view it from the exhibitions host. A discussion with the film maker and researchers from the Center for Genetic Engineering and Society will follow.

Richard Pell’s (@postnatural) earlier experimental documentary, Don’t Call My Crazy On The 4th Of July (2005), examines the curious case of Pittsburgher, Robert Lansberry, whose unusual political protests were a fixture of downtown Pittsburgh for 30 years. The film won the top prize at the Iowa Documentary Film Festival, Best Michigan Director at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and was an official selection at the Kassel Documentary Film Festival.

Pell is the founder and director of the Center for PostNatural History, an organization dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally and heritably altered through domestication, selective breeding, tissue culture, or genetic engineering. The Center for PostNatural History operates a permanent museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and produces traveling exhibitions that have appeared in science and art museums throughout Europe and the United States. Pell is a National Academy of Science KAVLI Fellow and was awarded the 2016 Pittsburgh Artist of the Year. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.

Elizabeth Pitts, PhD (linked) is the director of Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology at the University of Pittsburgh. She is an assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s Composition, Literacy, Pedagogy, and Rhetoric program. She received her PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media from NC State with a minor in Genetic Engineering and Society. Elizabeth’s research blends rhetorical theory, organizational studies, and science studies to examine how technologies influence the nature of professional work and professional identity. Her current book project offers insights into a movement to make the coding of DNA as pervasive as the coding of software.

Michael R. Dietrich, PhD. Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh. http://www.pitt.edu/~mrd98/

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium

Like traditional Science and Technology Studies, the new field of Indigenous STS studies the cultures, politics, and histories of non-Indigenous science and technology efforts. In addition, it studies Indigenous-led science and technology, including knowledges classified as “traditional.” Indigenous STS refuses the purported divide between scientific and Indigenous knowledges, yet it does not conflate knowledge traditions. It understands them as potentially sharing methods while deriving in practice from different worldviews. Indigenous STS—comprised of mostly Indigenous thinkers trained and working in a variety of disciplines and applied fields—also focuses on science and technology knowledge production for social change (since technoscience has long been integral to colonialism). Indigenous STS works with scientists and those in technology fields to change fields from within. Some Indigenous STS scholars are practicing scientists. After discussing Indigenous STS foundations and goals, this talk showcases the Summer internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics (SING), a training program founded in 2011 in the US. SING has since expanded to Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada, and Australia in conjunction with Indigenous STS efforts to support global Indigenous governance via science and technology.

The Rolf Buchdahl Symposium brings a guest lecturer to NC State each year to speak on issues that intersect with science, technology, and human values. Hosted by the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Program, Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS), and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Logistical support provided by the Genetic Engineering and Society Center.

Dr. Kim TallBear, Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies at University of Alberta

GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co