Hybrid | Jason Delborne spent the 2023-24 academic year as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in Washington, DC, working at the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office

Professor at NC State University | Profile Jason joined NC State in 2013 as a GES cluster faculty member and is tenured in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. His research focuses on stakeholder and public engagement surrounding emerging environmental biotechnologies, such as the genetically engineered American chestnut tree and genetic biocontrol for invasive species. He spent the 2023-24 academic year as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in Washington, DC, where he worked at the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. This will be Jason’s final semester at NC State, as he will begin a new faculty position in science and technology policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Public Affairs in January 2025.

AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships (STPF) provide opportunities to scientists and engineers to learn first-hand about policymaking and contribute their knowledge and analytical skills in the policy realm. Fellows serve yearlong assignments in the federal government and represent a broad range of backgrounds, disciplines, and career stages. Each year, STPF adds to a growing corps nearly 4,000 strong of policy-savvy leaders working across academia, government, nonprofits, and industry to serve the nation and citizens around the world. As an executive branch fellow, Jason Delborne spent the 2023-24 academic year on scholarly reassignment to the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. In this capacity, he learned about the practice of science and technology policy within an agency that exercised “soft power” to convene and coordinate federal research and development efforts on nanotechnology. In particular, he focused on the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s explicit goal of “responsible development,” organizing a workshop to reinvigorate a network of social scientists attending to nanotechnology. Jason will reflect on his experience and answer questions about the fellowship as a potential career path for graduate students in the social, natural, and physical sciences.

Related links:

• Science & Technology Policy Fellowships
• National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO)
• Download seminar poster

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Dawn Rodriguez-Ward and Katie Barnhill, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. The Podcast is produced by Patti Mulligan. Colloquium will be held in person in the 1911 Building, room 129, and live-streamed via Zoom.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

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Final GES Colloquium podcast of Spring 2024

Barbara Herr Harthorn, PhD, Research Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara

Profile | DOWNLOAD SEMINAR POSTER

This talk introduces 3 ongoing NSF-funded collaborative interdisciplinary projects investigating US public and expert views on bottom-up synthetic cells using a responsible research and innovation framework.

Based on three collaborative interdisciplinary research projects on bottom synthetic cells in development in the US on which she is PI, this paper presents an overview of findings on diverse publics’ perceptions of the benefits and risks of new syn cells and some of the main drivers of these views. The research uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodological toolkit based on semi-structured interviews, a large representative national survey, and public deliberations. Professor Harthorn examines the range and nuances of public views on these in-the-making science and engineering innovations and promises of enchanted futures, evolution-defying bioengineered life, and economic benefits. In spite of enduring techno-optimism, U.S. publics’ concerns center on the role of such technologies in accelerating economic and social inequalities and injustice. The project also explores public perceived boundaries between living/nonliving, perceived characteristics of life, and other factors that differentiate syn cell perceptions from those of other emerging technologies. The implications of these findings for technological governance and participatory democracy will be discussed.

Barbara Herr Harthorn is Professor Emerita and Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She is a medical, cultural, and psychological anthropologist whose research for the past 2 decades has focused on risk perception and public deliberation on societal and ethical aspects of new technologies, including nanotechnologies, fracking, and, currently, synthetic biology/synthetic cells. She served as founding Director and PI of the NSF national center, NSEC: Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California at Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB) from 2005-2017. In the CNS, she led international, interdisciplinary teams using mixed social science research methods to study risk and benefit perception regarding new technologies among experts and lay publics in the US and abroad. Since 2019, she has been conducting research on public and expert perceptions of synthetic biology and bottom-up synthetic cells within a responsible research and innovation framework. Dr. Harthorn’s publications include The Social Life of Nanotechnology (2012, Routledge, with John Mohr) and Risk, Culture & Health Inequality: Shifting Perceptions of Danger and Blame (2003, Greenwood/Praeger, with Laury Oaks) and numerous chapters, reports, and articles in risk analysis, social science, science and technology studies, science policy, environmental science, and nanoscience journals. She has given invited expert testimony on science in society issues to the US Congressional National Nanotechnology Caucus, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the NAS, the US National Nanotechnology Initiative, the US Multi-Agency group on Synthetic Biology, and the European Commission, among many others. Her past work included over a decade of research on Latina/o farmworker health and risk perceptions in California. She is an elected Fellow of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Applied Anthropology, and the AAAS.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. The Podcast is produced by Patti Mulligan. Colloquium will be held in person in the 1911 Building, room 129, and live-streamed via Zoom.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

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Scholars and funders alike have increasingly recognized engagement as an important dimension of innovation, but is engagement accomplishing what we think it is?

Emerging environmental biotechnologies such as gene drives have often been called for to respond to wicked environmental problems, including applications that have the potential to protect land and water (pesticide reduction), species protection, and human health. As gene drives are advancing at a rapid pace, myriad STS scholars have called for broad and inclusive community, stakeholder, and public engagement practices as a critical part of the epistemic landscape that should shape the innovation of these technologies. But in practice, how have these engagement practices contributed meaningfully to the responsible and just innovation of gene drives, particularly in the context of gene drives for vector control?

Drawing on an analysis of 73 documents related to more than 20 projects, groups, and institutions that have conducted some form of engagement about gene drives for vector control, we demonstrate that the vast majority of engagement activities’ outcomes have minimal measurable impact on gene drive innovation. In fact, most engagement outcomes (1) feed directly into further engagement scholarship and practice or (2) measure and/or encourage community acceptance of the technology. A minority of our findings included outcomes that were intended to shape governance or innovation practices themselves. If engagement practices that are normatively described as relational and co-productive, what do these results say about true politics of involvement in shaping shared futures?

In addition to expanding upon the measured outcomes of these engagement activities, I suggest reasons for why there is such a notable mismatch between what the STS engagement literature calls for and what outcomes are generated from engagement practices. Finally, I offer a potential solution to this mismatch, inviting social scientists and other engagement practitioners to turn the framework of responsible innovation onto ourselves.

Dr. Katie Barnhill: Drawing on interdisciplinary fields such as Environmental Science & Policy and Science, Technology, & Society studies, Dr. Barnhill primarily focuses on stakeholder engagement as an important mechanism for the governance of emerging environmental biotechnologies. She has worked on the governance and social science of biotechnology projects that have included applications such as invasive species management, species restoration, sustainable agricultural pest management, and public health. Dr. Barnhill has international research experience, has managed international research teams, and has experience collaborating with Indigenous community leaders in the U.S.

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Corporate and academic synthetic biology researchers are using sequence information from untold numbers of organisms to develop improvements in diverse product areas from agriculture to therapeutics. Quite often, such information is being used, and patented, without regard to the origin of the particular organism from which it was derived; in fact, the researcher may not even know or be able to easily trace the original geographic source. However, the Nagoya Protocol (NP) on Access and Benefit Sharing to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), requires that users of genetic resources share the benefits of such utilization with the providers of the original resources. Although copious monetary benefits are being generated from synthetic biology-based products, there is little evidence to indicate that any meaningful benefit-sharing is taking place.

The issue of whether or to what extent digital sequence information (DSI) is subject to such obligations is a point of significant controversy in CBD/NP and FAO Plant Treaty discussions. This talk will explore positions on both sides of these issues as well as on the related issues of the feasibility of a global multilateral benefit sharing mechanism as a vehicle for users to comply with benefit-sharing obligations which are not amenable to the current bilateral benefit sharing model.

Speaker Bio

Margo A. Bagley is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. She rejoined the Emory faculty in 2016 after a decade at the University of Virginia, School of Law. She currently serves on the National Academies Committee on Advancing Commercialization from the Federal Laboratories, and previously served on the National Academies Committee on University Management of Intellectual Property: Lessons from a Generation of Experience, Research, and Dialogue. She is also an expert technical advisor to the African Union in several World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) matters and is the Friend of the Chair in the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. In addition, she served as a member of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Digital Sequence Information on Genetic Resources for the CBD and Nagoya Protocol. Her scholarship focuses on comparative issues relating to patents and biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and access to medicines, technology transfer, and IP and social justice.

LINKS

Related publications available on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Margo_Bagley

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Via Zoom, NC State University

GES Mediasite - Video w/slides https://go.ncsu.edu/ges-mediasite

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Any scientist doing public-facing work should occasionally be reflecting on what responsibilities they are willing to undertake--what roles they want to play. Using the familiar typology laid out by Roger Pielke, Jr., are they setting out to be pure scientists, science arbiters, honest brokers or advocates? We'll use a relatively minor corner of the broader controversy swirling around COVID-19 as an opportunity for reflection in this chaotic and confusing moment. If you have a moment to prepare, take a look at the publication below.

Speaker Bio

A twisty path through law and classical rhetoric has led Jean Goodwin (@jeangoodwin) to an interest in scientists' participation in civic controversies. As a member of the Leadership in Public Science cluster, "I not only 'think' but also 'do' that," helping with programming intended to foster commitment to, and capacity for, public-facing science at NC State University.

Goodwin received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and her J.D. from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. in communication arts from the rhetoric program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to more than 25 years in the classroom introducing undergraduates to the rhetorical tradition, she has mentored graduate students across a variety communication subfields and academic departments. Her essays have been published in international journals in communication, philosophy and the sciences. She has served as a consultant on initiatives by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Union of Concerned Scientists to define the appropriate roles of scientists as advocates.

LINKS

Presentation Poll - https://pollev.com/publicscience

Davies, A., Thompson, K., Giri, K., Kafatos, G., Walker, J., & Bennett, A. (2013). Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic? Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 7(4), 413-418. doi:10.1017/dmp.2013.43. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/testing-the-efficacy-of-homemade-masks-would-they-protect-in-an-influenza-pandemic/0921A05A69A9419C862FA2F35F819D55

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Via Zoom, NC State University

GES Mediasite - Video w/slides https://go.ncsu.edu/ges-mediasite

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Emerging plant diseases threaten many foods crops including those we eat for breakfast such as coffee, oranges, banana and potatoes. Plant pathogens cause global losses estimated to be as high as $33 billion per year. The risk of introduction of pathogens into the US with trade requires continued monitoring and improved diagnostic capabilities at our borders. One of the largest challenges we face in agriculture today is to develop and deploy the appropriate technologies that will help reduce plant diseases and increase crop yield. New genetic tools are enabling scientists to piece together the evolution of emerging plant pathogens and track their spread. Jean Ristaino will discuss the latest research on P. infestans, the pathogen that caused the Irish famine, its impact on global food security and describe her use of genomic tools to track outbreaks and the evolution of new lineages using historic and recent specimens of P. infestans. Novel detection technologies combined with digital agriculture and bioinformatics tools will help mitigate outbreaks, improve deployment of host resistance and inform policy.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Jean Ristaino works on the population genetics of historical epidemics of the pathogen that caused the Irish famine Phytophthora infestans and studies the population structure and epidemiology of modern day late blight outbreaks. Her lab is interested in the impact of migration, recombination and hybridization on the evolution of Phytophthora species. Her work has tracked migrations of P. infestans from its ancestral home in the Andes to the US and Europe. She developed pioneering research techniques for use of 150-year-old historic herbarium specimens to track epidemics. She was also part of the team that sequenced the first genome of P. infestans. Her recent work with collaborators has used next generation sequencing to study historical outbreaks. Her lab also manages the disease surveillance network called USABlight.org. This system records late blight outbreaks, sends disease alerts to growers, and provides decision support tools for managing disease. She has recently developed novel VOC sensor-based technology for detection of late blight. She also conducts Phytophthora molecular diagnostics workshops globally. Her lab also has described new species including Phytophthora andina and Phytophthora acaciae and developed a Lucid-based taxonomic key. Dr. Ristaino was named a National Academy of Sciences Jefferson Science Fellow in 2012 and has worked on a range of emerging plant diseases that impact global food security with USAID. She currently directs a new faculty cluster at NC State on “Emerging Plant Disease and Global Food Security”. She was awarded a Fulbright Research Scholar Award in 2017 at the University of Catania in Sicily. Dr. Ristaino’ research impacts the science of plant pathology, epidemiology, population genomics, food security and science policy

LINKS

Ristaino Lab - https://ristainolab.cals.ncsu.edu/

A New Way to Fight Crop Diseases, With a Smartphone, New York Times, 7/30/2019 - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/science/tomato-potato-agriculture-blight.html

Portable Tech Sniffs Out Plant Disease In The Field, NC State News, 7/29/2019 - https://news.ncsu.edu/2019/07/handheld-tech-sniffs-plant-disease/

Genetics say the origins of the Irish potato blight were South American, Washington Post, 1/7/2017 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/genetics-say-the-origins-of-the-irish-potato-blight-were-south-american/2017/01/06/62bbb0a6-d1d0-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Via Zoom, NC State University

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Demand for animal protein is projected to rise by 54% by 2050 (40% population increase, and 14% increase on per capita consumption). Given the current use of land and the pace of agriculture production, it will be extremely challenging to satisfy that demand with the traditional sources of animal protein, while achieving environmental sustainability. Animal production accounts for 15%-25% of global emissions depending on how we account the different components that support production. Overconsumption of animal protein (and fat) is in part responsible for the increase poor health and health risks worldwide. Replacing part of the demand for animal protein by plant-based protein foods has the potential to reduce the pressure on land resources, as well as greenhouse gas emissions, while improving human nutrition and health. The PBP market is growing by double digits every year, and is expected to reach $90 billion in 2030 from $ 5 billion in 2017. Several animal protein producers have recognize the potential of PBP and they are rapidly developing the PBP divisions. While PBP are gaining presence across the country, products are still quite expensive, putting them out of reach for a vast proportion of the population who would benefit from them. North Carolina is one of the top States in animal protein production, leading the turkey meat and pork production. It can also become a leader in the PBP market if the appropriate research support helps the industry establish and develop. The State is also well located to supply the demand for PBP to the large proportion of people living in the East Coast. We will take a look at the continuum of potential protein production markets and the significance of each technology in terms of sustainability, nutritional health, consumer acceptability, and the implications for future research at institutions like NCSU.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Carlos Iglesias grew up in a small farming community in SW Uruguay, getting his BSc at the University of Uruguay. He got his MSc and PhD in Plant Breeding at Iowa State University. Later in his career he got a MSc in Ag Econ from Purdue University and a MBA in Food and Agribusiness from Indiana University.

Carlos has experience in the public (University of Uruguay, and International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia) and private sectors (Weaver Popcorn and Syngenta). He has directly worked or managed programs in different species (corn, cassava, popcorn, wheat); and has experience in more developed agriculture production systems (North America, Brazil/Argentina), as well as production in less developed regions of the world (Sub-Saharan Africa).

He is the creator of several varieties and hybrids still being grown, and his major focus has been in linking plant breeding to high value markets. Recently at Syngenta he was managing the NA Wheat Business Unit, a self-sustain unit supported by royalties from the seed business ($16 M in royalties in 2019).

LINKS

NC State Plant Breeding Consortium - http://plantbreedingconsortium.ncsu.edu/

SYNTHESIS REPORT: Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050, World Resources Institute - https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/creating-sustainable-food-future_2.pdf

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Poe 202, NC State University

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In order to sprout, grow, photosynthesize, fight off pests, flower, or produce fruits, plants turn on different sets of genes in their genomes. To understand how these basic processes are brought about, scientists must first determine what individual plant genes do. To do this, researchers typically modify genes of interest in the laboratory by changing or disabling specific gene functions via mutation, or fuse DNA to a reporter tag such as GFP. However, manipulating large genes in a test tube is often technically difficult. A technology called recombineering makes working with large (e.g., 100 kilobases) DNA fragments much easier and scalable. We have streamlined the process of identifying the bacterial strain carrying the large DNA fragment with the gene of interest and made the recombineering protocols scalable and applicable to a wide set of plant species.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Jose Alonso obtained his undergraduate and graduate (1994) degrees from the University of Valencia, Spain. After his postdoctoral training with Dr. Joseph Ecker at U. Penn and The Salk Institute (1995-2001), he joined the faculty of North Carolina State University where he is currently a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Plant Biology and University Faculty Scholar. His main research interest focus on the study of the molecular circuits plants use to integrate environmental and developmental signals to produce specific responses.

LINKS

Alonso-Stepanova Lab - https://alonsostepanova.wordpress.ncsu.edu/

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Poe 202, NC State University

GES Mediasite - Video w/slides https://go.ncsu.edu/ges-mediasite

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Expanding the general public's interest, understanding and acceptance of scientific knowledge is a perpetual challenge. The gap is considered bridgeable through multidisciplinary approaches. Arts and humanities is one such approach as evidenced by its combination with biotechnology, i.e. the "Art's Work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping Our Genetic Futures."

While visual and representative art coupled with laboratory science are this exhibition's major approach other forms of creativity are available. The communication of science via poetry combines the two worlds of C.P. Snow. "The Two Rita's" a poem, celebrates two highly-honored contributors to their fields, Pulitzer Prize recipient poet Rita Dove and former National Science Foundation director and American Association for the Advancement of Science president microbiologist Rita Colwell. It provides a keen example of the possibilities and opportunities for science communication through combining their significance in poetry that poses that there is no difference between the inherent creativity of the arts and sciences.

Speaker Bio

Darrell Stover is a cultural historian, science communicator and performance poet. His career life has always been an intersection of science and art sifted through history with an emphasis on community and individual empowerment through the same. He is on the faculty at NC State University where he teaches “Black Popular Culture: From the Blues to Afrofuturism” and “Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society.” He studied microbiology and American Studies at the University of Maryland at College Park and acquired his Master of Arts degree in Science Writing from Johns Hopkins University.

While in the Washington, DC area he worked at the National Cancer Institute as research assistant in support of the isolation and examination of retroviruses via cell culture, molecular biology, monoclonal antibodies, and electron microscopy. He moved into the private sector to Cambridge Scientific Abstracts as Senior Microbiology Editor developing content, coverage, and codification of published research for online databases in microbiology and biotechnology. Upon arrival in the Triangle he worked as science writer at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and was Science Writing Fellow at Virginia Tech University. His more recent public programs have been the performance/lecture “The Natural History of Afrofuturia” and the curation of a series on the cultural significance of the “Black Panther” film featuring a panel discussion on the science and technology represented on screen. The presentation of "Dream STEAM: Afrofuturist Dances with the Sciences" at the "Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurities” conference held at UNC-Chapel Hill expounded on the representation of biological sciences in African diasporic speculative fiction. He is a member of the 2019-2020 Southeast cohort of science impactors.

LINKS

Art's Work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping Our Genetic Futures - https://go.ncsu.edu/artswork

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Poe 202, NC State University

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Synthetic biology has many implications, both potentially positive and potentially negative, for biodiversity conservation. This includes both synthetic biology applications specifically intended to enhance biodiversity conservation, and those intended for other purposes (e.g., medicine, agriculture) that might also impact biodiversity. This talk examines the topic, focusing mainly on applications intended to enhance species conservation, with specific real-world examples of where they might be applied, and their potential pros and cons.

Speaker Bio

Elizabeth Bennett is the Vice President for Species Conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). She received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University, UK, for research on the ecology of primates in Peninsular Malaysia. She moved to Sarawak, Malaysia, in 1984, and worked there for the next 18 years. This included conducting the first ever detailed field study of the proboscis monkey, and studies of the effects of hunting and logging on wildlife. Her time in Sarawak culminated in her leading a team, with WCS and Sarawak Government staff, to write a comprehensive wildlife policy for the State, and subsequently to head a unit within the Government to oversee its implementation. She then became Director, Hunting and Wildlife Trade Program at WCS. This included working with WCS field staff to develop strategies to address the bushmeat trade in Central Africa and illegal wildlife trade in China. Her current role involves overseeing WCS’s species conservation programs globally. She has more than 130 scientific and popular publications. Her services to conservation have been recognized by her being awarded the “Golden Ark” award by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, “Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire” (MBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, D.Sc. (honoris causa) by Nottingham University, and and Merdeka Award for Outstanding Contribution to the People of Malaysia.

LINKS

Genetic frontiers for conservation: an assessment of synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation. Redford, KH, Brooks, TH, Macfarlane, NBW and Adams, JS. 2019. IUCN Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation, Gland, Switzerland. https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/48409

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Poe 202, NC State University

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The Ag Biotechnology Landscape has changed markedly from the 1980’s. In certain ways, however, the calendar can be argued to have cycled back on itself. Back then lab scientists and entrepreneurs were wildly optimistic about deployment. Some early applications of rDNA technology did move from the lab to the open environment, but not without challenges and controversy. Yet many applications never successfully passed over the threshold of the laboratory. Time moved faster than did the development of either technical, regulatory or societal solutions and startups faltered or were acquired. What constituted potential deployment areas constricted to just a few commercial opportunities, and large scale deployment shifted significantly to the purview of long-established corporations. Recent advances in genome reading, editing, or writing, plus those in the various biome technologies and new computational approaches to biology have together resuscitated interest in ag and environmental innovation. While corporate entities are consolidating, the startup ecosystem is thriving. So what learnings have we propagated to a new generation of technology developers, regulators and to society at large? If you are under 25 years of age you have never lived in a world without field deployed biotech crops. Or their controversies. With the renewed interest in deploying ag biotech products made by these newer technologies, have we partnered better this time with diverse stakeholders? Or are we setting up simply to re-plow the same ground?

Speaker Bio

Steven L. Evans spent 30 years bringing biotechnology products to the field in small and large companies. His research focused on biochemistry and recombinant protein expression in ag and environmental biotech. At Mycogen and Dow AgroSciences he developed native and recombinant biopesticides, natural products, and plant genome editing technology. Steve retired as a Fellow from Dow AgroSciences (now Corteva Agriscience) and founded Re-Knowvate LLC. His passion is to use this historical experience and repurpose it today in organizations driving 21st century biotechnology so that they may learn from the actions of the early pioneers in applied biotechnology, thus accelerating their ability to develop and deploy new technologies to benefit our world. Steve has been active in public-private partnerships (NSF SynBERC and the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC)) as well as serving on the NAS Future Products of Biotechnology and the NAS Safeguarding the Bioeconomy studies. He received his BA (chemistry) and BS (microbiology) from the Univ. of Mississippi and a PhD in microbial physiology from the Univ. of Mississippi Medical School. He was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and with the USDA in Peoria, IL.

LINKS

Sauermann H, Roach M (2012) Science PhD Career Preferences: Levels, Changes, and Advisor Encouragement. PLOS ONE 7(5): e36307. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036307

Slides at https://www.slideshare.net/GESCenterNCSU

Re-Knovate - https://re-knowvate.com/

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Poe 202, NC State University

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Much of the food we eat is derived from plants grown from seeds, or from animals that consume these types of plants. The seed industry has changed dramatically in recent decades, however, moving from one characterized by thousands of small and mostly family-owned businesses, to one in which more than 60% of proprietary seed sales globally are controlled by just four corporations. Importantly, these same four firms are even more dominant in global sales of pesticides. The impacts of these changes have included higher prices for farmers, fewer seed varieties, reduced rates of innovation, and a decline in seed saving. These trends are driven by changes in government policies that include reduced antitrust enforcement and increasing intellectual property protections on seeds, as well as a system that incentivizes large firms to continually increase their power. Dominant firms are facing increasing public opposition, however, and alternatives such as open source and heirloom seed firms, while currently very small, are growing rapidly. This resistance illuminates key leverage points for addressing the negative impacts of consolidation, and potentially to reverse these trends.

Speaker Bio Phil Howard is an Associate Professor of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. He is the author of Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat? His visualizations of food system changes have been featured in numerous outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Ecologist.

LINKS

Save Our Food. Free the Seed. By Dan Barber, New York Times Editorial. 6/7/2019. https://nyti.ms/2EY4mDj

Related Publications

Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat? London: Bloomsbury Academic. 2016. https://philhoward.net/2017/05/11/latest-book/

Intellectual Property and Consolidation in the Seed Industry. Crop Science, 55(6), 2489-2495. 2015. https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/cs/abstracts/55/6/2489

Visualizing Consolidation in the Global Seed Industry: 1996–2008. Sustainability, 1(4). 2009. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/4/1266/htm

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GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM, Poe 202, NC State University

GES Mediasite - Video w/slides https://go.ncsu.edu/ges-mediasite

More info at http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium | Twitter -https://twitter.com/GESCenterNCSU

Are you interested in pursuing a career in risk science? If so, tune in to hear from 5 panelists who represent a range of careers in various aspects of risk. Each of the panelists give a 5-minute lightning presentation on their backgrounds in risk science and areas of expertise in risk: assessment, communication, governance, and management. This will be followed by a facilitated discussion and Q&A session.

Moderator: Khara Grieger – Senior Research Scholar, GES Center, NC State Panelists:

• Jennifer Kuzma – Goodnight-NC GSK Foundation Distinguished Professor, SPIA, and Co-Director, GES Center, NC State
• David Berube – Professor, Communication, and Director of PCOST, NC State
• Chris Cummings – Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Amy Wang – Health Scientist, National Toxicology Program, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
• Paul Price – Exposure Scientist, National Exposure Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Khara Grieger is a Senior Research Scholar in GES, specializing in risk assessment, risk governance, and decision support for emerging technologies. She is also leading an initiative to grow the field of risk science in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) area through funding provided by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA). This symposium will be co-sponsored by the RTP chapter of SRA.

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Final seminar of the fall 2023 semester! Join us again in early January, 2024.

Profile | LinkedIn | @riley_ilyse An exploration of the containment paradigm in gene drive research and discourse, drawing on feminist and Indigenous science studies, and proposes a connectivity-based approach to gene drive governance.

Dr. Riley Taitingfong explores the widespread proposals for implementing novel genetic engineering technologies, specifically gene drives, on islands. Employing an interdisciplinary approach rooted in Communication Studies, Indigenous studies, and feminist science studies, her inquiry delves into how the scientific and regulatory literature supports the assertion that islands are optimal field trial sites for gene drives. The analysis centers on the activation of containment and confinement as crucial concepts that shape the discourse and material practices surrounding the “safe” development and utilization of gene drive-carrying organisms. This spans from enclosed laboratory tests to open outdoor releases, illustrating the intricate depiction of containment as a process accomplished through material infrastructure and stringent protocols. This portrayal stands in contrast to the depiction of confinement as an intrinsic quality of island geographies. Islands are often depicted as naturally conducive to biosafety, absent the constructed structures found in physical laboratories. She argues that the relatively weak operationalization of confinement in island settings stems from deep-seated associations between island geographies and isolation, rooted in colonial imaginaries that historically justified experimentation on both the geographies and peoples of islands. She further contends that the rhetorical emphasis on safety and security in the literature masks the extent to which proposals advocate for displacing risks onto island geographies. In conclusion, Dr. Taitingtong offers strategies and tools for reimagining gene drive governance through oceanic perspectives, rejecting narrow frameworks of isolation in favor of foregrounding connectivity and relationships as essential elements in the ethical governance of science and technology.

Related links:

• Taitingfong, R. I. (2020). Islands as laboratories: indigenous knowledge and gene drives in the Pacific. Human Biology, 91(3), 179-188. PDF (Requires login with Unity ID)
• Taitingfong, R., & Ullah, A. (2021). Empowering indigenous knowledge in deliberations on gene editing in the wild. Hastings Center Report, 51, S74-S84. PDF
• Natalie Kofler and Riley Taitingfong. Advances in genetic engineering test democracy’s capacity for good decision-making. The Boston Globe. (2020). PDF

Dr. Riley Taitingfong is a Chamoru researcher and educator working on issues of environmental justice, Indigenous self-determination, emerging technologies, and community engagement. She completed her PhD in Communication at the University of California San Diego, where her project focused on Indigenous governance of gene drive technologies. Riley is currently a postdoctoral researcher with the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona, where her projects focus on building practical tools for Indigenous Data Sovereignty. When she’s not working, Riley loves to go birding, paddling, and diving.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

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VIDEO: Watch on YouTube, or on Mediasite (allows toggling between video and slides)

Monday, January 13, 7 - 8:30 pm, Hunt Library Auditorium Presented by the Genetic Engineering and Society Center in collaboration with the Genetics and Genomic Initiative at NC State and the Society for Risk Analysis.

We can now imagine a future where humanity’s demands of the earth plateau or even decrease. But at that plateau there will be billions more people needing to be fed than exist today.

Sir Charles Godfray's talk argues that it is possible to feed this number of people without despoiling the environment, but only if we make hard decisions today.

"We require a new revolution in agriculture of the same magnitude as the industrial and green revolutions that not only boosts productivity but also radically improves resource-use efficiency and sustainability. We need to reduce waste across the food system. We need to make hard decisions about diets and consumption patterns. And we need to accept globalization and refashion a globalized food system that provides public as well as private benefits."

Following his prepared remarks, Chancellor Randy Woodson then led a discussion with Professor Godfray.

Sir Charles Godfray is the Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford University, and Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, whose work examines how the global food system will need to change and adapt to the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. In 2010 he authored a paper, “Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People,” in the journal _Science _that has been cited over 6,000 times. Many of his more recent papers on the subject dig deeper into this subject.

Godfray currently chairs the Science Advisory Council of the UK’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 2017 was knighted for his services to scientific research and for scientific advice to government.

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Profile | Website A look at the farming strategies of two communities of North American farmers in Brazil and how they make sense of thorny subjects such as farmland financialization, genetically engineered crops, and labor management.

This talk focuses on a comparative ethnography of two groups of transnational soybean farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado. In 1968, Holdeman Mennonites embarked on a tour of rural Brazil. In search of autonomy, they found cheap farmland in Rio Verde, Goiás and encountered a government eager for their migration. Decades later, a group of Midwestern family farmers toured rural Brazil and found cheap, expansive farmland. They courted investors (mostly neighboring farmers), bought massive tracts of land, and settled in Luis Eduardo Magalhães, Bahia. The two groups’ migrations began with experiences of crisis: for the Mennonites, a cultural crisis in the United States that threatened their family and community reproduction and for the Midwestern family farmers a farm crisis which threatened their livelihoods. In Brazil, they adopted common farming techniques related to soil fertilization and tillage, yet differed in crop rotations, use of technology, and most starkly in their perceptions of what counted as “good farming.” Each community internally contested identity and value as they made meaning out of transnational lives and industrial farming. Their negotiation of agronomic factors, cultural preferences, and the economics of producing soy in Brazil demonstrates the interconnectivity of social and material factors in agriculture. Related links:

• Andrew Ofstehage. (2018), Farming out of place:. American Ethnologist, 45: 317-329. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12667
• Andrew Ofstehage (2016) Farming is easy, becoming Brazilian is hard: North American soy farmers’ social values of production, work and land in Soylandia, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 43:2, 442-460, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2014.998651

Dr. Andrew Ofstehage is currently a program coordinator at NC State; previously, he was a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University. He completed his PhD in Anthropology in 2018 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he defended his dissertation, “‘When We Came There Was Nothing’: Land, Work, and Value among Transnational Soybean Farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado.” His research among transnational soybean farmers in Brazil incorporates training in agronomy and anthropology and asks how transnational farmers engage with soils and landscapes in Brazil; become managers of workers and investors; and create and re-create agrarian communities out of place. He is now conducting new research on the bio-cultural life of soy consumption in the United States, planning new work on the socio-material life of soil, and continuing ethnographic research with transnational soy farmers in Brazil.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

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Profile | Website Synthetic biology offers new hope for the eradication of invasive alien species from islands, a pressing need in the face of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.

The talk explores the dynamic intersection between international dialogue on synthetic biology (SynBio) and the pressing need for new tools for the removal of invasive alien species (IAS) from islands. It begins by highlighting the vulnerability and ecological importance of the world’s islands, often threatened by the disruptive presence of IAS. Simultaneously, it develops, from a personal and practical perspective, the path of the dialogue of IAS and the interaction with synthetic biology. It also extends on these two issues at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and how this dialogue shapes the ethical and policy framework for Synbio. This presentation uncovers the fertile common ground where these two spheres converge, translating high-level policy aspirations into tangible, science-based actions. The talk delves into the challenges posed by IAS in island ecosystems and emphasizes the role that synthetic biology can play for the conservation of species and the prevention of extinctions by providing innovative tools for their control and eradication. Through collaborative solutions, the talk concludes by highlighting the potential of synthetic biology for the eradication of invasive exotic species and the need to continue the search for new technologies to solve the pressing problems of the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity.

Related links:

• Island communities threatened by invasive rodents have potential new conservation tool, Island Conservation, Nov. 2022
• Genetic frontiers for conservation: an assessment of synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation. IUCN Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation, 2019. Download PDF
• Process of Elimination, Wired, Feb. 2018

Carolina Torres Trueba is an attorney at law, with a minor in litigant, financial and corporate law from Universidad de los Hemisferios. She has over ten years of experience managing environmental cases. In the conservation field, she was the lead attorney for the Galápagos National Park Directorate (GNPD). During her period at the GNPD, she managed environmental issues regarding vessel wrecks on San Cristobal Island as well as environmental cases in the Galápagos. She is a member of the International Trans-disciplinary Academy of Environment (ATINA), and a Kinship Conservation Fellow (2019 cohort). She has been the focal point for international policy matters at the United Nations (UN) and The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) representing IC. She has supported the dialogue on synthetic biology and Gene Drives since 2015.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Jennifer Kuzma, PhD, Co-Director of GES Center, & Associate Director of PreMiEr at NC State | Profile page Download seminar poster 

The engineering of microbiomes in the built environment is a new area of inquiry that comes with many uncertainties and under-explored societal implications. This talk will explore the work of the new NSF-funded Precision Microbiome Engineering Center (PreMiEr) and the exploration of the social, equity, and ethical (SEI) implications. Related links:

• PreMiEr project site: https://premier-microbiome.org/
• PreMiEr SEI homepage: https://go.ncsu.edu/nsf-premier

Jennifer Kuzma, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs, and co-founder and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center at NC State University. She also serves as Associate Director and Lead of the Societal and Ethical Implications Core of the new NSF Precision Microbiome Engineering Center.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Xaq Frohlich, PhD, Associate Professor of History at Auburn University

A history of U.S. food labeling policies and “informational turn” in food politics, and a critical look at debates in recent decades over labeling GMOs, “organic”, and other food risks and alternative food movements.

In recent decades there has been a proliferation of third-party certification schemes in food markets, which consumers experienced at the supermarket through various new labels for lifestyles: organic, non-GM, dolphin-safe, carbon footprint, fair-trade, and animal-welfare approved, among others. Drawing from my forthcoming book, From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (UC Press, 2023), this talk gives a history of this “informational turn” in food politics, starting with the U.S. FDA’s turn to nutrition labeling in the 1970s. It then situates debates in the 1990s about GMO labeling and USDA “organic,” debates that continue today, in a larger history of risk labeling and credence goods that illustrates persistent ambivalence among policymakers on the wisdom of using the food label as a tool to “empower” or “nudge” consumers on controversial subjects. While many have heralded informative labels, such as the FDA’s introduction of the Nutrition Facts panel in 1993, as a new form of hands-off, yet pro-public governance that enables healthy choices, I make the case that informative labels are also a problematic market device that unloads responsibility onto consumers, and, as is the case for the recent “bioengineered” foods label, can even work as a technology of obfuscation, rather than transparency. Through a history of the food labels in America, this talk explores the struggles of scientific, legal, and market experts to frame food, diet and risk for the average consumer.

Resource Links

• From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age, by Xaq Frohlich
• Download flyer for 30% off discount code

Xaq Frohlich is an associate professor of history of technology at Auburn University. He is trained in history and STS, and his research centers on food, diet and health risks, consumer politics, and market governance. His book, From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (UC Press, 2023), tells a biography of the food label, from the U.S. FDA’s food standards to the use of informative labels (such as Nutrition Facts) today.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Amarish Yadav, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow (Max Scott Lab) at NC State | Profile | Google Scholar A discussion about the molecular genetics of homing gene drives disrupting doublesex gene, as well as its potential and challenges in the D. suzukii population control.

The CRISPR/Cas9-based homing ‘gene drive’ has emerged as a revolutionary genetic-based method that holds great promise for control of insect pests. Insect pests pose a significant risk to global crop loss, food security, and public health. In recent years, considerable progress has been made in the field of modern gene-drive which advances our understanding of its genetic and molecular mechanisms, biocontainment strategies, potential risks, and challenges. Using the genome-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9, Amarish has successfully developed and evaluated a split (biosafe) homing gene-drive which disrupts doublesex gene for the population control of an agricultural pest, Drosophila suzukii. The initial homing gene drive strains he made showed dominant female sterility and biased inheritance of up to 70%. The drive construct was modified such that females were dominant fertile (recessive sterile) and the Cas9 construct re-engineered using D. suzukii components. The final split-homing gene-drive strains showed 94-99% biased inheritance of the engineered genetic element and recessive female sterility. In his talk, Amarish will discuss the molecular genetics of the homing gene drives disrupting doublesex gene, as well as its potential and challenges in the D. suzukii population suppression. Related links:

• Yadav, A. K., Butler, C., Yamamoto, A., Patil, A. A., Lloyd, A. L., & Scott, M. J. (2023). CRISPR/Cas9-based split homing gene drive targeting doublesex for population suppression of the global fruit pest Drosophila suzukii. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(25), e2301525120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301525120. PDF (requires Unity ID)
• Download PowerPoint slide deck

Dr. Amarish Yadav is a postdoctoral research scholar in Prof. Max Scott’s laboratory at NC State University, where he has been working on the development of genetic-based pest control methods such as homing gene drives and evaluating safeguards in the agricultural pest spotted wing drosophila (Drosophila suzukii). His doctoral research at Banaras Hindu University in India was to investigate the genetic and molecular aspects of cancer progression linked to the loss of cell-polarity regulators function in Drosophila melanogaster. During his postdoctoral research at NC State, using CRISPR/Cas9 technology, he developed the first split homing gene drive in spotted wing drosophila which targets doublesex, a gene essential for female fly development. In addition, he has generated various transgenics and eye-color mutants to be useful in the D. suzukii genetics research. Amarish is currently assessing the population-suppression potential of gene drive strains at laboratory scale as well as the influence of different genetic backgrounds on the gene drive efficiency in this pest.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Profile | Website | Related GGA Seminar Evidence suggests that high school biology textbooks in the US may reinforce an essentialist construal of gender.

Special two-day engagement with the Genetics & Genomics Academy, sponsored by the College of Education and the Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership

Essentialism is the lay assumption that categories of living things have underlying, unobservable “essences.” When applied to gender, this assumption has a range of negative consequences, including stereotyping and discrimination. In this talk, Dr. Brian Donovan will present evidence from a content analysis and a randomized control trial to suggest that high school biology textbooks in the US communicate an essentialist construal of sex and gender to students and that students grow in their gender essentialist thinking after reading such texts. Dr. Donovan will argue that rather than conveying accurate knowledge about the biological and social complexity of sex and gender, biology education in the US seems to instead promote messages consistent with gender essentialism. Related links:

• Humane Genetics, BCBS Science Learning
• Donovan, B. M., Weindling, M., Lee, D. (2020). From Basic to Humane Genomics Literacy: How Different Types of Genetics Curricula Could Influence Anti-Essentialist Understandings of Race. Science & Education. PDF

Brian M. Donovan is a senior research scientist at BSCS Science Learning, which is the oldest science education organization in the United States. He holds a B.A. in biology from Colorado College, a M.A. in teaching from the University of San Francisco, and a M.S. in biology and Ph.D. in science education from Stanford University. His research explores how genetics education interacts with social-cognitive biases to influence how students make sense of complex biological and social phenomena. By translating this research into frameworks that inform curriculum, instruction, and teacher education, Brian hopes to create a generation of researchers, teachers, and curriculum writers who know how to teach about human difference in a more humane manner. Brian’s award-winning educational research (e.g, The 2020 National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Early Career Research Award, The 2017 & 2022 Research Worth Reading Awards from NARST) has been reported on in the United States (e.g., The New York Times, The Atlantic/Undark, & EdWeek) and abroad (e.g., BBC Radio, The Independent, & The Australian Broadcasting System). Currently, he is the principal investigator of four different NSF-funded research projects that explore the cognitive, social, and educational factors that link the learning of human genetics to reductions in racism, sexism, and deterministic worldviews that limit human potential. Before his research career in science education, Brian taught middle school science for seven years in San Francisco.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Daniel Uribe, MBA, Co-Founder & CEO at GenoBank.io | @duribeb Discover how BioNFTs are revolutionizing the Life Sciences by providing verifiable biosamples and biodata for training ethical AI models

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the convergence of blockchain technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is heralding unprecedented opportunities and challenges in Life Sciences. One of the most pressing issues we face is the ethical use of biosamples and biodata in AI model training. This talk introduces the groundbreaking concept of BioNFTs (Biological Non-Fungible Tokens), a solution designed to ensure data provenance, integrity, and ethical compliance. BioNFTs serve as a decentralized verification mechanism, allowing researchers, biobanks, and other stakeholders to authenticate the origins, chain of custody, and consent associated with biosamples and their corresponding biodata. These tokens operate on blockchain technology, providing a tamper-proof, transparent record of interactions.

The utilization of BioNFTs in AI model training fundamentally shifts the paradigm. By ensuring the ethical sourcing and utilization of biosamples and biodata, we can instill trust among the community and participants, thereby accelerating the adoption of AI in life sciences applications ranging from drug discovery to personalized medicine. This is especially critical when the biodata under study are derived from sensitive populations or rare conditions, where misuse or misrepresentation can have significant ethical implications.

Moreover, BioNFTs can be a game-changer for compliance with evolving global regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA, offering a novel way to provide proof of data provenance and informed consent. They also pave the way for a new economy, where individuals could monetize their anonymized data by granting time-bound access to researchers via tokenized consent. The talk will delve into real-world applications, potential pitfalls, and the roadmap ahead for integrating BioNFTs into our AI-driven future in life sciences. This concept has already been peer-reviewed by the British Blockchain Association based on the article “Privacy Laws, Genomics Data and NFTs“. Join us as we explore how BioNFTs can be the cornerstone for establishing ethical AI models in Life Sciences.

Resource Links:

• Daniel Uribe (2020) Privacy Laws, Non-Fungible Tokens, and Genomics. Conference: 2nd International Science Conference 2020At: Edinburgh, Scotland, March 2020. Online at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341463779_Privacy_Laws_Non-Fungible_Tokens_and_Genomics. PDF
• Demo video: Decentralized Biospecimen governance using BioNFTs™ (by GenoBank.io)

Daniel Uribe: With over six years of experience as co-founder and CEO of GenoBank.io, I am passionate about leveraging blockchain and genomics to enable users to establish ownership and control of their genomic datasets using BioNFTs (ERC721). My core competencies include creating and executing the vision, strategy, and business model of GenoBank.io, leading a multidisciplinary team of experts and advisors, and partnering with academic, industry, and government stakeholders to advance the field of personal genomics and data privacy. I have a strong background in data science, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics, as well as certifications in Ethereum Solidity Dapp, eQTL Functional Genetics, and RNA-seq Workshop. I also hold an MBA from IPADE Business School and a certificate in Data: Law, Policy and Regulation from The London School of Economics and Political Science.

My mission is to empower individuals to access, share, and monetize their genomic data in a secure, transparent, and ethical way, while contributing to the scientific and social good. I believe that BioNFTs are the future of personal genomics and data sovereignty, and I am excited to be at the forefront of this innovative and disruptive field.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

Amanda Pierce, Senior Advisor at US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The U.S. Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology describes the comprehensive federal regulatory policy for ensuring the safety of biotechnology products with the goal of protecting health and the environment without impeding innovation. Under the framework, EPA, FDA, and USDA aim to cover the full range of plants, animals and microorganisms derived from biotechnology in an integrated and coordinated manner. The Office of Pesticide Programs in EPA is responsible for evaluating and ensuring the safety of novel applications of recent discoveries in genetics, molecular biology and other biological disciplines when applied to real world pest control problems – e.g., genetically engineered animals for pest population control and plant-incorporated protectants. In this colloquium, I will explain EPA’s role in the regulation of biotechnology and discuss the development of policies and regulations for emerging technologies.

Amanda Pierce is a Senior Advisor in the Emerging Technologies Branch in the Office of Pesticide Programs at EPA where she focuses on advancing ecological risk assessment and policy initiatives for cutting edge biotechnologies within the United States government and internationally. She received her Ph.D. in Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution from Emory University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, Amanda became a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at EPA where she applied her population genetics expertise to developing risk assessment frameworks for emerging technologies.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

While aquaculture biotechnology has the potential to improve the sustainability of aquaculture, its realization will depend upon enabling public policy.

Download seminar poster

Aquaculture products are important to human nutrition, especially in developing countries. To meet growing global demand, aquaculture must improve production systems and farmed stocks, the latter using both selective breeding and gene technology. Fishes are excellent systems for gene technology, and numerous transgenic and gene-edited lines have been developed. While there has been considerable R&D, there has been little penetration of the marketplace. The reasons for this will be considered, with a case study focusing on the development and regulatory oversight of the AquAdvantage Atlantic salmon, the first genetically modified animal approved for use as food globally. Two gene-edited marine fishes have been approved for sale in Japan. Will other animal products of gene technology be approved? To realize the benefits of animal biotechnology, we will need not just innovation, but also enabling regulation creating a pathway to the market, and engagement with the private and NGO sectors and the public.

Related links:

• Heritable Genetic Modification in Food Animals, NASEM
• SAAA Animal Biotechnology Resources: https://www.isaaa.org/kc/proceedings/animalbiotechnology
• Hallerman, E., J. Bredlau, L.S. Camargo, et al. 2024. Enabling regulatory policy globally will promote realization of the potential of animal biotechnology. CABI Agriculture and Life Sciences, 5: 25. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43170-024-00221-6. PDF

Eric Hallerman is a recently retired Professor of Fish Conservation at Virginia Tech University and is currently serving as the Chair of the ad hoc committee appointed by the National Academies to explore heritable genetic modifications of food animals. His research has included conservation genetics of fishes and mollusks, aquaculture genetics, and aquaculture biotechnology and policy. He has done research on gene transfer in fish, effective confinement of aquaculture species, ecological risk assessment for genetically modified fish, and related public policies. He has done such work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and several NGOs. He has served on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences with mandates in these areas and organized several international workshops on animal biotechnology policy.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. The Podcast is produced by Patti Mulligan. Colloquium will be held in person in the 1911 Building, room 129, and live-streamed via Zoom.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

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Ross Bassett, Professor of History at NC State

In 1965 Gordon Moore published a paper with observations on progress in integrated circuits. In the nearly sixty years since, the continued applicability of those observations, now enshrined as Moore’s law, has been the driving force behind the power and ubiquity of electronics in today’s world. Moore’s Law has become the point of reference for any field of science or technology experiencing rapid growth. This presentation looks at Moore’s Law in historical detail, arguing that it is as much or more about capitalism than science or technology. The audience is invited to comment on whether a more nuanced and historically accurate Moore’s Law might be relevant to genetic engineering.

Ross Bassett is a professor of history at North Carolina State University, where he teaches courses in the history of technology and the history of capitalism. He was originally trained as an electrical engineer and worked at IBM for 8 years. He later received his PhD in history from Princeton. He is the author of two books: To the Digital Age (a history of the MOS transistor), and The Technological Indian. He is currently working on a history of French engineers and their learning and use of the English language.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in person in the 1911 Building, room 129, and live-streamed via Zoom.

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GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

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Googe Scholar | Twitter @ODonnellKiera93 Insights into the complex factors that shape people's perceptions of their environment and their decisions around shoreline protection.

Coastal communities around the world face a growing threat from rising sea levels, more severe storms, and droughts. To address these challenges, many have turned to natural and nature-based features (NNBF) as a means of reducing hazard exposure while also providing important environmental and social benefits. Despite their many advantages, however, a significant number of waterfront property owners continue to opt for hardened infrastructure to protect their shorelines. Kiera O'Donnell investigated the aftermath of two hurricanes to gain insight into the dynamics between people and their environment in the context of shoreline protection. While both communities surveyed showed an awareness of the protective properties of NNBF, a majority chose hardened infrastructure as their preferred option. Her study sheds new light on the complex factors that influence decision-making in the face of environmental hazards, and highlights the importance of understanding these dynamics to ensure effective and sustainable solutions.

Kiera O'Donnell earned her PhD in 2022 from Northeastern where she worked with Dr. Steven Scyphers and was a member of his Social-Ecological Sustainability lab. Her dissertation research focused on the landscape and social outcomes of Hurricane Irma in the lower Florida Keys and Hurricane Michael in the Florida Panhandle. Kiera holds a BS degree in Oceanography from the University of New England and previously worked at NOAA as a data analyst for sea level and storms.

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

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Website | Twitter @Beebrookshire

Bethany Brookshire, science journalist and author of Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, made the transition from scientist to science writer. Along the way, she learned how many assumptions non-scientists make about scientific writing…and how many assumptions scientists make about non-scientific readers. The world of science writing is, in its way, just as much of a specialty as genomics, and Brookshire is here to pull back the curtain on it all.

Related links:

• Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains (also available as audiobook)

Related same-day events:

• 4:30-5:30 PM – Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, @ Fishbowl Forum, D.H. Hill Library
• 7:00-8:30 PM –  A conversation with Dr. Bethany Brookshire and NCMNS Mammalogist Dr. Mike Cove, WRAL 3D Theater, NC Museum of Natural Science (to be filmed by C-SPAN!)

Bethany Brookshire is a freelance science journalist and the author of the December 2022 book, Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She is also a host and producer on the podcast Science for the People. She is a former staff writer with Science News magazine and Science News for Students, a digital magazine covering the latest in scientific research for kids ages 9-14. Her freelance writing has appeared in Scientific American, Science News magazine, Science News Explores, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Slate and other outlets. Bethany has a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She was a 2019-2020 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building, Room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates.

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

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

Website | Twitter @TheKazath A look at the limits of benefit-cost analysis (BCA) in biotechnology governance and discussion of its social utility compared to alternatives.

Benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is a ubiquitous method for evaluating policies throughout the US federal and state governments and around the world. It has been used for both normative and descriptive purposes, both prospectively and retrospectively, to assess the economic efficiency of policies. However, there are significant and well-known limitations in the method, especially in its insensitivity to fairness, equity, and justice. With these considerations receiving increasing prominence in political and policy discourses, including those surrounding biotechnology governance, what is the social utility of BCA going forward (compared to alternatives)? In this colloquium, I will quickly review the basic economic theory motivating BCA, summarizing some of my recent research deconstructing the method’s inherent indeterminism. I will then outline different areas of biotechnology policy in the US government where a role for BCA has been – or could be – implicated. I will describe a partial BCA from my own research evaluating the consumer welfare implications of agricultural gene drives, to motivate audience discussion questioning the utility of BCA in biotechnology governance.

Related links:

• Brown, Z. S. (2022). Distributional policy impacts, WTP-WTA disparities, and the Kaldor-Hicks tests in benefit-cost analysis. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 113, 102654. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102654. PDF >
• Jones, M. S., Delborne, J. A., Elsensohn, J., Mitchell, P. D., & Brown, Z. S. (2019). Does the US public support using gene drives in agriculture? And what do they want to know? Science Advances, 5(9), eaau8462. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau8462. PDF >
• Jones, M. S., & Brown, Z. S. (2019). Landscape-level pest control externalities when consumer preferences are non-neutral. In 2019 Annual Meeting, July 21-23, Atlanta, Georgia (No. 290815). Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. PDF >

Dr. Zack Brown is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, serves on the Executive Committee of the Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center, and is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and Policy (CEnREP) at NC State. He teaches classes in environmental and resource economics in NC State’s Economics Graduate Program and also teaches and advises students in the AgBioFEWS graduate fellowship program funded by the National Science Foundation. His research broadly examines questions in the field of bioeconomics, examining interactions between economic agents and biological and ecological systems.

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in 1911 Building Room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates.

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

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

Website | Twitter @latifajackson Multi-omic data has been used to create narratives about who we are as humans—are they correct or do they tell a very one-sided story? Hosted in collaboration with BAA (Being an Ally in Academics).

Related reading:

• First Person: Latifa Jackson, _American Scientist _

As an assistant professor of pediatrics at Howard University, Latifa Jackson is concerned with public health, but also with evolutionary biology and the genetic signatures of selection that can affect disease outcomes. Jackson is part of an initiative at Howard’s William Montague Cobb Research Laboratory called the 1,000 African-American Genomes Project, which aims to compare samples from different populations of current and ancestral Africans to determine differing allele frequencies.

While the events over the last several years in the United States have placed an important focus on issues of race, diversity, and systemic inequalities; these issues are long-standing and embedded within institutions, academic disciplines, and the broader scientific community. In response to the most recent examples of these inequalities, NC State has stated that “Diversity is critical to NC State’s mission” and that “New perspectives deepen our understanding, strengthen our community and propel our innovation.” Building upon NC State’s mission statement and past successful race and science events, NC State’s Being an Ally in Academics (BAA) group has collaborated with Genetics and Genomics Academy, the Genetics and Engineering in Society Center (GES), and TriCEM to organize a new two-day workshop series titled, “Genes and Society: Decolonizing Human Genetic Research”. The goal of this series is to explore the current and historical intersections of racism, systemic inequalities, and human genetic research with an emphasis on inviting diverse and historically underrepresented groups as seminar speakers.

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

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

Website | Twitter @brossardd

In an age of rapid advancements in genetic research and technology, it’s more important than ever to understand the impact of communication on how we perceive, understand, and engage with publics about genetic information.

Related links:

• Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2022). The chronic growing pains of communicating science online. Science, 375(6581), 613-614. DOI: 10.1126/science.abo0668. PDF (*Unity ID required)

Dr. Dominique Brossard is professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an affiliate of the UW-Madison Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the UW-Madison Energy Institute, the UW-Madison Global Health Institute, the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Morgridge Institute for Research. Her teaching responsibilities include courses in strategic communication theory and research, with a focus on science and risk communication.

Brossard’s research agenda focuses on the intersection between science, media and policy with the Science, Media and the Public (SCIMEP) research group, which she co-directs. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the International Communication Association, Brossard is an internationally known expert in public opinion dynamics related to controversial scientific issues. She is particularly interested in understanding the role of values in shaping public attitudes and using cross-cultural analysis to understand these processes. She has published more than 100 research articles in outlets such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science Communication, Public Understanding of Science, the International Journal of Public Opinion, and _Communication Research _and has been an expert panelist for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) on various occasions. She currently serves on the NASEM Climate Communication Initiative Advisory Committee as well as on the Executive Committee of the Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN), which aims at facilitating rapid and actionable responses to social, behavioral, and economic-related COVID-19 questions. Brossard is a member of the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. She is also on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences and she is the Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation.

Brossard has a varied professional background that includes experience in the lab and the corporate world. Notably, she spent five years at Accenture in its Change Management Services Division. She was also the communication coordinator for the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II (ABSPII), a position that combined public relations with marketing communication and strategic communication. Her family worked dairy farms for many generations.

Brossard earned her M.S. in plant biotechnology from the Ecole Nationale d’Agronomie de Toulouse and her M.P.S and Ph.D. in communication from Cornell University. You can find a list of her publications on Google Scholar.

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building, Room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates.

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

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

Website | Twitter @fbnsncstate

"The definition of food law used to be a simple one – it encompassed food regulatory law with two main audiences: lawyers and the regulated food industries. Today, however, food law is often broadened in meaning to include all law related to agricultural trade, such as how food is grown, humane animal treatment, and environmental rules for farms and processors." (From Food Regulation by Neal Fortin)

The development of genetically engineered foods created an even greater (and heated) discussion linked to several complex issues, especially safety in terms of consumption and the understanding of their impact on the environment. So, the question is: "How should these foods be regulated?" The United States takes a more relaxed approach compared to the strict rules of the European Union. Despite the differences, the final goal is the same: ensuring that foods entering the markets are safe for consumption. This presentation will summarize the main characteristics of the regulation of genetically engineered foods in the United States. Related links:

• Fortin, N. Food Regulation: Law, Science, Policy, and Practice. Wiley, 2nd. ed., 2022.
• Roberts, M.T. Food Law in the United States. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• Strauss, S., Sax, J. Ending event-based regulation of GMO crops. Nature Biotechnology, 34, 474–477 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3541
• BE Disclosure | USDA
• Biotechnology | USDA
• How GMOs Are Regulated in the United States | FDA
• Movement of Certain Genetically Engineered Organisms – Final Rule | Federal Register
• “Natural” Modifications: The FDA’s Need to Promulgate an Official Definition of “Natural” that Includes Genetically Modified Organisms | The George Washington Law Review
• Regulation of Biotech Plants | USDA
• Revised Regulations (previously SECURE Rule) | USDA
• Same Science, Different Policies: Regulating Genetically Modified Foods in the U.S. and Europe | Harvard University
• What’s the Right Way to Regulate Gene-Edited Crops? | Leaps.org

Dr. Fernanda Santos is a veterinarian, poultry scientist, and food safety specialist. During her veterinary training, her primary focus was zoonotic diseases and disease prevention. Then, she focused her work on pathogen growth in foods of animal origin, quality control programs, and molecular tools. She has also studied alternative methods and nutritional strategies to improve performance and reduce Salmonella intestinal colonization in poultry. Currently, at NC State, her focus is food safety and course development. She is responsible for the graduate food safety minor and teaching several courses in the food science program, including food laws and regulations and food product development. She has also created a new series of courses, “The Discover Series”, which are food science-related courses that are taught not only to food science/nutrition students but also to any undergraduate student who seeks to understand the science behind foods and controversial topics of food and nutrition.

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building, Room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates.

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

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

• Karletta Chief, PhD, Director, Indigenous Resilience Center; Professor & Extension Specialist, Department of Environmental Science, University of Arizona
• Amy R. Sapkota, PhD, Professor, School of Public Health, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health
• Yael Perez, PhD, Development Engineering Program Director at the Blum Center and the InFEWS Program Coordinator

Joining us from three different NSF research traineeships on food, energy, and water systems (FEWS), our panelists will share each programs’ challenges, opportunities, and sustainability.

The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) program seeks to explore ways for graduate students in research-based master’s and doctoral degree programs to develop the skills, knowledge, and competencies needed to pursue a range of STEM careers. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas, through a comprehensive traineeship model that is innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs. Join us as the GES Center hosts a panel to learn about three NRT programs focused on Food, Energy and Water Systems (FEWS). Now that the programs have finished and/or are close to finishing, what future lies for their continuation? What lessons have they learned about implementing an interdisciplinary and convergent research program? We will discuss each programs’ challenges, opportunities, and sustainability with the traineeship. Our speakers include: Dr. Karletta Chief with Indige-FEWSS (Indigenous Food, Energy, and Water Security and Sovereignty) at the University of Arizona, Dr. Amy Sapkota with the Global STEWARDS (STEM Training at the Nexus of Energy, WAter Reuse and FooD Systems) program at the University of Maryland, and Dr. Yael Perez with InFEWS (Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems) at the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California Berkeley. Related links:

• Indige-FEWSS
• UMD Global STEWARDS
• InFEWS
• NSF Program abstracts and resulting publications: – Indige-FEWSS: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1735173 – UMD Global STEWARDS: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1828910 – InFEWS: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1633740

Dr. Karletta Chief (Diné) is a Professor and Extension Specialist in Environmental Science at the University of Arizona. Dr. Chief works to bring relevant water science to Native American communities in a culturally sensitive manner. As Director of the Indigenous Resilience Center, she aims to facilitate efforts of UArizona climate/environment researchers, faculty, staff, and students working with Native Nations to build resiliency to climate impacts and environmental challenges. Two of her primary tribal projects are The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Climate Adaptation and Traditional Knowledge Project and Gold King Mine Spill Diné Exposure Project. Dr. Chief also leads the NSF Indigenous Food, Energy, and Water Security and Sovereignty Program and is training 38 graduate students. Indige-FEWSS’s vision is to develop a diverse workforce with intercultural awareness and expertise in sustainable food, energy, and water systems (FEWS), specifically through off grid technologies to address the lack of safe water, energy, and food security in Indigenous communities.

Dr. Amy Sapkota is an MPower Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. She is the Interim Director of the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and the Director of CONSERVE: A Center of Excellence at the Nexus of Sustainable Water Reuse, Food & Health that was launched with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture in 2016. She is also the Principal Investigator of a doctoral training program, UMD Global STEWARDS (STEM Training at the Nexus of Energy, WAter Reuse and FooD Systems)—funded by the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) program—that is preparing a cadre of future leaders focused on innovations at the nexus of food, energy and water systems. Dr. Sapkota’s research interests lie in the areas of environmental microbiology, environmental microbial genomics and exposure assessment. Her projects evaluate the complex relationships between environmental microbial exposures and human infectious diseases, with a special focus on assessing the public health impacts associated with water reuse.

Dr.  Yael Perez is the Development Engineering (DevEng) Program Director at UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, managing the DevEng Masters and the DevEng PhD Designated Emphasis. Yael holds a PhD in Architecture from UC Berkeley with a scholarship on co-design methodologies and technologies to support and empower communities and design practitioners in fostering sustainable development. For over a decade, she has been collaboratively leading CARES—Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability—a team of UC Berkeley faculty and students working with Native American Citizens in their pursuit of sustainable development. Recently, this initiative grew into the Native FEWS Alliance, a cross-institutional collaboration working to significantly broaden the participation of Native American students in Food, Energy, and Water Systems (FEWS) education and careers to address critical challenges facing their communities. Before joining the Blum Center, Yael was a visiting scholar at IIT Mandi (India).

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building, Room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates.

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

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

Website | Twitter @fbnsncstate Where the food science and nutrition communities have come and may be going in defining sustainable food systems with examples from research in the NC State Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Department.

Achieving sustainable food systems has been a growing agenda item among scientists, food and nutrition associations, and the food industry. Examples of goals and actions for some of these groups can be contrasted with the projects that individual scientists try to wedge into the sustainability umbrella. Similar examples from past NC State food and nutrition research will show that trends in research funding for specific projects to meet industry needs can now be rewritten to show progress toward a sustainable food system, even when that might not have been the original intent of the research. The research interests of international and domestic students and the groups that provide their funding also create an interesting contrast in this field. Additional progress can be made as we address the teaching and research of our current students to create the future scientists who will evolve the understanding of a sustainable food system. Additionally, Ms. Brown will be reporting briefly on the National Sweetpotato Collaborators Group meeting as it pertains to her research and food science study. The National Sweetpotato Collaborators Group is comprised of stakeholders across industry, academia, and government which meets annually to discuss emerging research. The fields of study present at the meetings include, but are not limited to plant physiology, plant breeding, molecular biology, pathology, entomology, cultural practices, food science, and marketing. The objective of the meeting is the rapid dissemination of information to improve the growth of sweetpotatoes and sweetpotato products in the United States for the benefit of the multiple stakeholders. Ms. Brown’s research involved a preliminary consumer survey of health, purchasing habits and acceptance/awareness of biotech in the sweetpotato sector. Related links:

• National Sweetpotato Collaborators Group

Dr. Jonathan Allen is a professor in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Science at North Carolina State University and Director of the Food Science Graduate Program. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in milk and dairy products, lactation, exercise nutrition, and energy metabolism. His research projects cover glycemic control as impacted by food processing and bioactive components in foods such as sweet potato, peanuts and milk, nutrient fortification of flour, and processing strategies. Allen has gained an international reputation for the understanding and potential amelioration of such chronic diseases as infant growth retardation, metabolic bone disease, diabetes, and hypertension. He has trained students who hold food industry, government, academic, and NGO positions in more than a dozen countries. A Fellow of the American College of Nutrition, and the Institute of Food Technologists, Dr. Allen has been active in the IFT Dairy Foods Division and new Sustainability Division with technical research paper reviews and graduate student competitions, and was on the IFT Dietary Guidelines for Americans Task Force. He is a member of the Climate/environment, Health, Agriculture and Improved Nutrition (CHAIN) Research Interest Group of the American Society for Nutrition.

Rebekah Brown is a Cohort 3 AgBioFEWS fellow and PhD candidate in the Food, Bioprocessing, and Nutrition Sciences Department at North Carolina State University. Some of her research involves stakeholder engagement regarding the use or acceptance of biotechnology in sweetpotatoes and sweetpotato products as well as the health and sustainability of different processing techniques.

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building Room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

Website | Twitter @hastingscenter This presentation focuses on ethical and oversight issues as they relate to the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals, e.g., “chimeric research.”

Research involving the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals at various stage of development – referred to here as chimeric research – has helped scientists learn how human cells behave in a living environment. Advances in human stem cell science and gene editing are enabling scientists to more extensively and precisely insert human cells into nonhuman animals at any stage of development. Scientists have conducted in vitro experiments with chimeric embryos and in vivo studies that create chimeric animals. The goals of these studies include developing more accurate models of human diseases, creating inexpensive sources of human eggs and embryos for research, and developing sources of tissues and organs suitable for transplantation into humans. Yet concerns have been raised that by biologically altering nonhuman animals with human cells – particularly at an early stage of the chimeric animal’s development – scientists may end up changing them in morally relevant ways, especially if the chimeric animals exhibit “humanlike” behaviors or capacities that they previously lacked. An NIH-funded interdisciplinary research project of The Hastings Center and Case Western Reserve University examined the ethical, oversight, and policy issues regarding research that involves the transfer of human embryonic or induced pluripotent cells, or cells derived directly from them, into nonhuman animals or nonhuman animal embryos. This presentation highlights three of the project’s recommendations:

1. scientists, journalists, bioethicists and others writing about chimeric research should use precise and accessible language that clarifies rather than obscures the ethical issues at stake;
2. animal welfare is a primary ethical issue and should be a focus of ethical and policy analysis as well as the governance of oversight of chimeric research; and
3. enhanced communication between institutional committees involved in oversight of chimeric research is needed, as well as a mechanism for a national discussion amongst those in oversight of these studies.

Related links:

• Clarifying the Ethics and Oversight of Chimeric Research, Josephine Johnston, Insoo Hyun, Carolyn P. Neuhaus, Karen J. Maschke, et. al., 2022
• Composite Animals: Then and Now, Amy Hinterberger, 2022
• Human, Nonhuman, and Chimeric Research: Considering Old Issues with New Research, Jeff Sebo, Brendan Parent, 2022
• Threats to Benefits: Assessing Knowledge Production in Nonhuman Models of Human Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Carolyn P. Neuhaus, 2022
• Moral Status and the Oversight of Research Involving Chimeric Animals, Patricia Marshall, Kaitlynn P. Craig, Insoo Hyun, 2022
• A Conversation with Chimeric Animal Researchers, Kaitlynn P. Craig, 2022
• How Chimeric Animal Research Impacts Animal Welfare: A Conversation with Animal Welfare Experts, Kaitlynn P. Craig, 2022

Karen J. Maschke, PhD is a Research Scholar at The Hastings Center and the editor of the Center’s journal, Ethics & Human Research. As a researcher with training in political science and bioethics, she focuses on policy and ethical issues related to the introduction, use, regulation, and oversight of new biomedical technologies. She recently completed two projects: the NIH-funded project, “Actionable Ethics Oversight for Human-Animal Chimera Research” (co-Principal Investigator) and the NSF-funded project, “Public Deliberation on Gene Editing in the Wild” (co-Investigator). She is currently the lead co-Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded project, “Informing Ethical Translation of Xenotransplantation Clinical Trials.” She is interviewed frequently by the media, appearing in AP, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Washington Post, Kaiser Health, STAT News, Reuters, and Bloomberg Law. Her recent book (co-authored with Michael K. Gusmano), is Debating Modern Medical Technologies: The Politics of Safety, Effectiveness, and Patient Access (Praeger, 2018).

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building, room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

Profile | @StevenHeine4 How psychological biases of essentialism distort the ways people understand genetics, eugenics, and GMO products.

People the world over are essentialist thinkers – they are attracted to the idea that hidden essences make things as they are. And because genetic concepts remind people of essences, they tend to think of genes in ways similar to essences. That is, people tend to think about genetic causes as immutable, deterministic, natural, and they create homogenous and discrete groups. I will discuss the results of a number of psychological experiments that reveals how people’s essentialist biases distort the way that they understand genetic causes. In particular, I’ll discuss the relationships between essentialist thinking, eugenic beliefs, and attitudes towards GMO products.

Related links:

• DNA Is Not Destiny: The Remarkable, Completely Misunderstood Relationship between You and Your Genes, Steven Heine

Steven J. Heine is a Professor of Social and Cultural Psychology and a Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia. After receiving his PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1996, he had visiting positions at Kyoto University and Tokyo University, and was on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to British Columbia. Heine has published several dozen journal articles in such periodicals as Science, Nature, and Behavioral and Brain Sciences He has authored the best-selling textbook in its field, entitled “Cultural Psychology,” and has written a trade book called “DNA is not Destiny.” Heine has received numerous international awards and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Heine’s research focuses on a few topics that converge on how people come to understand themselves and their worlds. One of his main projects, which is the topic of his presentation, focuses on genetic essentialism, which explores how people make sense of genetic ideas. Quite typically, people have an overly fatalistic understanding about how genes influence their lives. For example, he finds that when people learn that genes relate to their risk for obesity they subsequently tend to eat more junk food, as they feel that their weight is beyond their control. He has explored how people’s essentialist views of genetics affects their support for eugenics and GMO products.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. The Podcast is produced by Patti Mulligan. Colloquium will be held in person in the 1911 Building, room 129, and live-streamed via Zoom.

Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and LinkedIn for updates.

Colloquium Home | Zoom Registration | Watch Colloquium Videos | LinkedIn | Newsletter

GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

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The 2022 Annual 4S conference brought together researchers and practitioners to explore science, technology and innovation across different cultural, economic and social settings.

The 4S Meeting is an annual conference organized by the Society of Social Studies of Sciences (4S). Science and Technology Studies (STS) is an academic field of research that focuses on the relationships between science, society, technology and innovation across different cultural, economic and social settings. 4S 2022 was held in Cholula, Mexico and was the second joint meeting with ESOCITE (The Latin American Science and Technology Studies Association). The conference was trilingual (Spanish, Portuguese and English) as part of the goal to diversify STS to other regions in the world such as Latin America. As AgBioFEWS scholars, we focused our attention on topics related to genetic engineering, governance of emerging technologies, agriculture, conservation and participatory methods. Overall, it was an enriching experience that increased our knowledge of STS methods and theories and expanded our professional networks.

Related links:

• Society for Social Studies of Science 2022 Meeting

Sebastián Zarate is a PhD student at NC State’s Forestry and Environmental Resources Department. Sebastián comes from Peru with a background in social sciences. He graduated from Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru with a B.A in Sociology and has a master’s in Science and Technology Policy from Arizona State University. He has worked in GRADE (Grupo de Analisis para el Desarrollo) a Peruvian Think Tank that focuses on public policy and co-founded Sidereus Nuncius, a nonprofit that is involved in the governance of science and technology in Peru. He is part of the AgBioFEWS Fellowship at NC State. He is interested in science and technology policy in Latin America, sustainability, emerging technologies, natural resources, and the environment. Jill Furgurson is a first year PhD student in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at NC State. Her current research explores how broader stakeholder engagement can support more inclusive decision making around the evaluation of new environmental biotechnologies, such as the genetically engineered (GE) American Chestnut tree. In particular, how can the exchange of different kinds of knowledge, especially Indigenous knowledge, support more trusted and just decisions? She holds an M.S. in Forestry and Environmental Resources, where she conducted research pertaining to the sustainable use of natural resources used in Cherokee art forms. Her research for her M.A. in Geography assessed the impact of various social, spatial, and environmental risk factors on disease incidence.

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building, room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

AgBioFEWS Fellows Asa Budnick, Nick Loschin, Joseph Opoku Gakpo and Modesta Abugu will share their observations on and interrogate practices at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada that eventually lead to global decisions on the governance of biotech crops.

The United Nations’ Biodiversity Conference is a once every two years conference led by the Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that gathers stakeholders from all over the world to set out global plans on how to protect biodiversity. The December 2022 conference laid out a new set of nature protecting goals to be implemented from now till 2030, dubbed the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The conference held from the 7th to 19th December 2022 served as the Fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CP-MOP 10), and the Fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (NP-MOP 4).

We present learnings from our participation in various plenary and working group sessions which deliberated on biotechnology regulations, risk assessment, detection and regulation of living/genetically modified organisms, agroecology, digital sequence information (DSI), among others. We also speak about our one-on-one meetings and side events with various delegates and groups, and inform on the role of academia and research organizations in influencing policy decisions at the CBD – COP. And then, respond to the question: Has the UN Biodiversity Convention been a force for ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in how biotech crops are regulated globally? Finally, we provide overall recommendations on how these deliberations could be improved if it should continue serving as the platform for decision making on biotech crop regulations globally.

Related links:

• United Nations Biodiversity Conference
• COP15 concludes with historic deal to protect biodiversity
• Blog: Reflections on COP15, by Willy Wei, Nick Loschin, and Khara Griger, 1/13/23

Modesta Nnedinso Abugu (@modestannedi) is a PhD student in the sweetpotato breeding and genetics program, under the supervision of Dr. Craig Yencho and Dr. Massimo Iorizzo. Her research seeks to understand the genetic mechanism of interaction of various sweetpotato flavor compounds. She is passionate about communicating science to the public, especially on the potentials of agricultural biotechnology tools in promoting food security, and also interested international regulation of biotech crops. She obtained her masters degree in Horticultural Science from the University of Florida, and BS in Biochemistry from the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Joseph Opoku Gakpo (@josephopoku1990) is a PhD student in Agricultural and Extension Education at the Department of Agricultural and Human Sciences, NC State University. His research interests include: communicating controversial sciences like GMOs, vaccinations, and climate; factors that influence success in agricultural education; and how communication is shaping global philanthropic efforts to reduce poverty. He holds a Bsc in Agricultural Biotechnology from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Ghana, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from NC State. He is a journalist by profession and is the 2018 International Federation of Agricultural Journalists’ Best Video Journalist Star Prize Award winner. He was also a 2016 Global Leadership Fellow with Cornell University’s Alliance for Science Program. Nick Loschin is a PhD student in the Applied Ecology Department, working in the Interdisciplinary Risk Sciences team under Dr. Khara Grieger. He decided to join the PhD program at NC State because he is interested in better understanding the interdisciplinary intersections between risk assessment, sustainability, and community engagement within the context of new food and agriculture technologies. Over the past few years, he has been working at US EPA as an ORISE Research Fellow where he has centered his work within social and natural sciences in order to make science more accessible to diverse groups. More specifically, his team is situated within the Sustainable and Healthy Communities National Research Program, where they focus on environmental justice, science translation, and cumulative risk impacts. He also volunteers with the RTP Speakers Bureau, where he regularly gives presentations on sustainability to a wide variety of audiences and organizations. Asa Budnick is pursuing a PhD in Plant Biology. He works in the lab of Dr. Heike Sederoff studying plant molecular biology and genetics. Asa graduated with a BS in Biology from Northeastern University in 2018. Before entering NC State, he worked at MIT, Editas Medicine, and Inari Agriculture. With a focus on sequencing and gene editing technology development for crop improvement. Asa wants to work to improve food system sustainability and food sovereignty while utilizing and building an understanding of plant genetics.

GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building, room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

This is a bonus episode featuring a special guest hosted by the NC State Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and GBIRd – Genetic Biocontrol of Invasive Rodents programs. Note, the audio is a little rough due to the way it was recorded. The video is also available here, as well as the PDF of the presentation slides.

Deliberately or accidentally introduced invasive species have cost the Australian economy AUD$390 billion during the past 60 years, with vertebrate pests such as feral cats and rabbits amongst the costliest, and more effective landscape-scale management tools are needed. Novel revolutionary genetic technologies have recently been developed that can force modified genetic traits into an animal population, defying the constraints of normal Mendelian inheritance. Combined with a highly specific gene editing system, this technology has the potential for population control of pests, for example by creating all-male or female infertile offspring which would ultimately lead to the collapse of the target population. Delivered and spread through sexual reproduction the potential of this powerful new technology is unprecedented, making pest eradication theoretically feasible. Proof of concept in a mammalian model system (mice) has recently been achieved, raising the possibility of exploring these technologies for some of Australia’s most intractable and damaging vertebrate pests. In line with the Guiding Principles for Sponsors and Supporters of Gene Drive Research (Science, 2017), in addition to technical developments, extensive consultations are currently underway in Australia with key stakeholders including scientists, government regulators, policy makers and public representatives. Moving forward it will be essential to ensure a transparent and informed debate, responsible conduct of science, provide a robust regulatory framework, and to identify key pathways and barriers to adoption of any putative genetic control tools.

Related links:

• CSIRO – Biological Control of Rabbits
• Tanja Strive on Google Scholar
• Download event flyer

Dr. Tanja Strive is a Senior Principal Research Scientist within CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, based in Canberra, Australia. A molecular virologist by training, she joined CSIRO in 2002 following the completion of the PhD at the Philipps University in Marburg, Germany. She has since worked on a series of projects investigating lethal and non-lethal, and both GM and non-GM, biocontrol options for a range of feral animal species, including European foxes, mice, cane toads and rabbits. During the past ten years Tanja has led a project portfolio of both applied science and fundamental research projects aimed at developing a pipeline of biocontrol tools for European rabbits, exploring both classical viral biocontrol approaches and more recently prospects for genetic biocontrol technology. For more information, please contact Dr. Jason Delborne, Director of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at jadelbor@ncsu.edu.[Talk Description]

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

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

›  Marcie Cohen Ferris, PhD, Interim Director, Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-Chapel Hill ›  Michaela DeSoucey, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology at NC State

• Marcie Cohen Ferris’ work examines how evolving food cultures in North Carolina and the larger American South speak to the region’s complex history, culture(s), and struggle for racial justice, food equity, food sovereignty embodied in the powerful voices of a contemporary generation of farmers, food makers and creators, activists, scholars, policy makers, consumers, and more.
• Michaela DeSoucey’s exploration of ‘food culture’ requires us to acknowledge the complexity and paradoxes of the memories, desires, emotions, and debates that ‘flavor’ different ingredients and dishes. She will discuss what a cultural sociological lens brings to the contemporary study of food culture, focusing on boundaries and ethics as markers of social differentiation.

Related links:

• Edible North Carolina
• Center for the Study of the American South

Marcie Cohen Ferris (@ferrismcf), editor of Edible North Carolina, is a writer and educator whose work explores the American South through its foodways and the southern Jewish experience. She is interim director of UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South and an emeritus professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she serves as an editor for Southern Cultures, a quarterly journal of the history and cultures of the U.S. South. Ferris’s books include The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region and Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South. She is a co-editor of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History. In 2018, Ferris received the Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance.

Michaela DeSoucey is Associate Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University. She is a qualitative, cultural sociologist whose research examines cultural and moral markets, consumer-focused organizations, and the politics of authenticity and risk, specifically around food. She is the award-winning author of Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food, published by Princeton University Press (2016), as well as numerous articles on food-related topics from bean-to-bar chocolate to craft beer to food halls to peanut allergy.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates.

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

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

› Leah Ceccarelli, PhD, Professor at University of Washington › David Kirby, PhD, Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cal Poly University - San Luis Obispo Drawing on perspectives from rhetorical criticism and media studies, Drs. Leah Ceccarelli and David Kirby discuss the role of popular science-fiction films in shaping public perception of scientists and emerging biotechnologies.

Dystopias, biological warfare, and near human extinction are common tropes in science-fiction film and television. These representations not only provide entertainment, but reflect deep-seated fears and hopes for scientific and technological futures. This is especially true for biotechnology (think Stephen King’s The Stand and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park), where cinematic narratives can shape the public’s imagination of scientists and their practices. Because the interplay of science and media is an important force shaping our understanding of innovation, scientists should be interested in what’s playing on the big screen. With that in mind, members of GES’s AgBioFEWS Cohort 3 have invited Drs. Leah Ceccarelli and David Kirby to lead a discussion on popular science-fiction films and their impact on the public’s orientation to science and technology, with a special focus on scientists’ credibility and genetic engineering.

Related links:

• Kirby, D.A. (2007) The Devil in Our DNA: A Brief History of Eugenic Themes in Science Fiction Films, Literature and Medicine, 26(1): 83-108
• Kirby, D.A. & L.A. Gaither (2005) Genetic Coming of Age: Genomics, Enhancement, and Identity in Film, New Literary History, 36(2): 263-282.
• Kirby, D.A. (2004) Extrapolating Race in Gattaca: Genetic Passing, Identity, the New Eugenics, and the Science of Race, Literature and Medicine, 23(1): 184-200.
• Ceccarelli, L. Scientific Ethos and the Cinematic Zombie Outbreak, Mètode: Science Studies Journal 6 (2016): 107-13.

Dr. Leah Ceccarelli (@leahcecc) is a critic and theorist whose research focuses on interdisciplinary and public discourse about science. She directs the University of Washington's Science, Technology, and Society Studies Graduate Certificate program. Selected as a Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America, and as a recipient of the National Communication Association's Douglas W. Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar award for her career of research, she has also received national awards for her two books on the rhetoric of science, and for a couple of her articles. She serves on several editorial boards and is co-editor of a book series on Transdisciplinary Rhetoric sponsored by the Rhetoric Society of America and Penn State University Press. Dr. David A. Kirby (@king_gwangi and @CalPolyCLA) is Professor and Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Liberal Arts and Director of the Science Technology & Society Program at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. His research examines how movies, television, and computer games act as vehicles of scientific communication. Several of his publications address the relationship between cinema, genetics and biotechnology. He has also explored the collaboration between scientists and the entertainment industry in his book "Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists and Cinema." He is currently writing a book titled "Indecent Science: Religion, Science, and Movie Censorship."

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

Website | Twitter: @jeangoodwin and @PublicSci_NCSU What drives polarization on contested issues like GMOs? We’ll discuss one potentially surprising factor.

Public debates have been trending increasingly bitter and polarized since the 1990s, increasingly so over the last decade. Science-heavy debates on issues like climate change, pandemic policies and of course agricultural biotechnology are no exception. In this “work in progress” presentation I review recent scholarship on the extent, drivers and implications of polarization in the two most studied situations: US politics (liberal v. conservative, Democrat v. Republican) and climate change. I close by inviting participants to reflect on the significance of this lit review for “denialism,” “anti-science,” “war on science” et sim. in the GMO debates.

A twisty path through law and classical rhetoric has led Dr. Jean Goodwin to an interest in scientists’ participation in civic controversies. As a member of the Leadership in Public Science cluster, “I not only ‘think’ but also ‘do’ that,” helping with programming intended to foster commitment to, and capacity for, public-facing science at NC State University. Goodwin received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and her J.D. from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. in communication arts from the rhetoric program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to more than 25 years in the classroom introducing undergraduates to the rhetorical tradition, she has mentored graduate students across a variety communication subfields and academic departments. Her essays have been published in international journals in communication, philosophy and the sciences. She has served as a consultant on initiatives by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Union of Concerned Scientists to define the appropriate roles of scientists as advocates.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

This Colloquium is dedicated to reviewing the recent Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation released on September 12, 2022.

This Colloquium begins with a brief overview of the Executive Order by Nick Loschin and then a discussion facilitated by AgBioFEWS cohort members Nick Loschin and Jabeen Ahmad with GES-Affiliated faculty Dr. Zack Brown. GES Executive Committee members and all three cohorts were invited to attend to discuss the current order and its political implications for the GES Center, each cohort group project, and their respective disciplines.

• 2022 Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy
• Biden issues executive order promoting agriculture and food biotechnology, Greg Jaffe, September 2022
• Executive Order 13874 -June 11, 2019, Modernizing the Regulatory Framework for Agricultural Biotechnology Products
• 2019: Biotechnology Oversight Gets an Early Make-Over by Trump’s White House and USDA: Part 1—The Executive Order, Jennifer Kuzma, June 2019
• Optional: A Missed Opportunity for US Biotechnology Regulation, Jennifer Kuzma, Science, 2016 (see: related news post)
• Just added – Optional: CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (Fact Sheet, CHIPS and Science Highlights: Bioeconomy)
  • Search for “Engineering Biology” in the CHIPS Bill
  • CRS – White House Initiative to Advance the Bioeconomy, E.O. 14081: In Brief, Marcy E. Gallo and Todd Kuiken, Oct. 2022
• Optional: Special Collection: Executive Order on Biotechnology-related publications, GES Center faculty

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates.

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

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

Website | Twitter @FoodSystemsASU Preliminary findings from mixed-methods research that investigated why one county in Eastern North Carolina is trending strongly towards diversified cropping systems while its neighboring county is rapidly simplifying.

Although modern farming tends towards specialization, diversified agriculture can mitigate the drivers and effects of climate change alike. In North Carolina, the agricultural landscapes of two bordering counties starkly diverge. Both display surprisingly high productivity, but one has been trending sharply towards simplified crop landscapes, and its neighbor, towards diversified. As part of a mixed-methods project, this talk presents a comparative, historically informed analysis of these two counties through the perspectives of diverse farmers and stakeholders. It analyzes how differential effects of 20th century changes in agricultural policy, agronomic characteristics, and historical path dependencies together embedded neighboring farmers’ decision-making within distinct contexts leading to distinct crop geographies. Drawing on land-use theory, we suggest that approaching crop diversification as a form of landscape change helps to explain these dynamics and identifies the multi-scalar drivers of crop diversification. The presentation also discusses the methodological process of merging “big” data from national-level datasets with “deep” data from farm visits and oral history interviews, and points towards future research opportunities created by such mixed-methods approaches.

Related links:

• Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems

Dr. Andrea Rissing is an Assistant Professor of sustainable food systems in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Her research themes include U.S. farmers’ diverse livelihood strategies, processes of agrarian change, and local food system governance. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology in 2019 from Emory University, and completed postdoctoral research fellowships at The Ohio State University and Emory University before starting at ASU in Fall 2022.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

Profile | Twitter @barnhilldilling A broad overview of the GES Center project (funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank) that has explored the relevant policy and capacity for developing gene edited crops in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Gene editing tools for agriculture have certainly been the subject of great promise, hope, and hype the world over. However, there remains considerable uncertainty regarding the ways in which regulatory systems and other institutions will manage and govern products made with gene editing. In a project funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank, we have explored the regulatory policy context and institutional capacity for developing and bringing to market gene edited products for agriculture throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. This talk will provide an overview of the project itself and share high level results of our analysis, including the results of policy analysis, stakeholder interviews, and case study development.

• CRISPR in Latin America and the Caribbean project page with publications and resource files
• Presentation Slides

Dr. Katie Barnhill-Dilling is a social scientist with the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at NC State University, where her research explores engagement as a tool for just and inclusive governance of emerging environmental biotechnologies. With training at the intersection of Science, Technology, and Society studies (STS) and environmental science, policy, and governance, Dr. Barnhill-Dilling works on projects that include a range genetic interventions for environmental issues such as species protection and ecosystem restoration, as well as governance of gene drive systems and other genetic tools for both agricultural and public health applications.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

Website Writing about science for the public is fun, and hard, and requires some skills you may not regularly use as a scientist.

What’s good, bad and sometimes weird about writing for the general public? And how can people get started doing it? I will discuss some of the ideas—and misconceptions—about popular science writing.

• Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test: How Behavior Evolves and Why It Matters, Marlene Zuk (2022)
• Why we do what we do: From regenerating sea slugs to self-medicating sheep, biologist Marlene Zuk probes the origins and evolution of behavior in a new book, Review by Rob Dunn, Science, 4 Aug 2022 (*NC State access link)
• THE UP-GOER FIVE TEXT EDITOR and De-Jargonizer

Dr. Marlene Zuk is a behavioral ecologist interested in the evolution of sexual signals, mate choice, and the role of parasites in host ecology, evolution and behavior. Most of her research is on insects, especially crickets. She is also interested in how people think about animal and human behavior, and has written several books for general audiences about animals and evolution. Dr. Zuk is a professor at the University of Minnesota, and before that was on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

Profile | Download seminar poster In North Carolina, social reformers and welfare officials relied on eugenics ideology as they built the welfare state before the New Deal, with lasting effects for our contemporary definitions of citizenship.

Between 1929 and 1977, North Carolina officials approved the surgical sterilization of over 7,600 people under the aegis of the state’s eugenics program. To help explain the persistence of this program, I turn to its roots, since rationales for eugenics offered in the first three decades of the twentieth century shaped the course of the program for years to come. In this talk, I analyze the growing appeal of eugenics to influential white North Carolinians who debated and promoted eugenics from 1900 onward. These social reformers honed their ideas about eugenic fitness and the need to preserve the Anglo-Saxon race while they built a statewide social welfare apparatus. Their statewide grid of welfare offices later became the basis for distribution of New Deal funds.

In building this statewide welfare system, reformers and social workers eagerly explored eugenics as a solution to social problems, then refashioned and interpreted eugenic principles for a broader audience. They linked principles of eugenics to ideas that already had broad support among white middle-class North Carolinians, including Christian charity, racial segregation, and a celebration of the state’s Anglo-Saxon heritage. They also relied on eugenics-inspired metaphors to rationalize the unequal distribution of welfare services, giving new force and apparent scientific legitimacy to longstanding prejudices about the undeserving poor. They trained a new generation of professional social workers to see eugenically “unfit” people as undeserving of social services, and they promised that segregation and sterilization would curb the costs of social welfare programs. Ultimately, North Carolina’s white social reformers built eugenics-inspired ideas of racialized fitness and restrictive definitions of citizenship into our contemporary institutions.

Anna Krome-Lukens completed her Ph.D. in U.S. History at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the history of social welfare and public health policies, particularly the history of North Carolina’s eugenics and social welfare programs in the early 20th century. Anna is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Reform and Regeneration: Eugenics and the Welfare State in the South, which demonstrates the lasting influence of eugenics in shaping welfare policies and conceptions of citizenship. She directs UNC’s Public Policy Capstone Program and also teaches first-year courses on higher education and food policy.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. The Podcast is produced by Patti Mulligan. Colloquium will be held in person in the 1911 Building, room 129, and live-streamed via Zoom.

Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and LinkedIn for updates.

Colloquium Home | Zoom Registration | Watch Colloquium Videos | LinkedIn | Newsletter

GES Center at NC State University—Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology.

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

Abstract There is a long tradition of ethics in engineering practice with the first engineering codes of ethics appearing early in the 20th century, but as an academic sub-field engineering ethics only began to emerge in the 1970s. In most treatments, engineering ethics is grounded in the concept of engineering as a profession. Following a brief introduction of engineering ethics and professionalism, this presentation will focus on some key concepts of engineering ethics scholarship and teaching that might be useful in thinking about ethics in the context of genetic engineering and society. Among these are codes of professional ethics; the use of case studies; microethics and macroethics; engineering as social experimentation; and ethics as design.

LINK TO POWERPOINT SLIDES

Joseph “Joe” Herkert, D.Sc., is Associate Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and Society, North Carolina State University. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at NC State’s Genetic Engineering and Society Center and was a Co-PI on the NSF Grant “Comparing Cultures of Responsible Innovation across Bioengineering Communities.” Herkert has been teaching engineering ethics and science, technology & society courses for more than thirty-five years. He is editor of Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Engineering: Selected Readings (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2000) and co-editor of The Growing Gap Between Emerging Technologies and Legal-Ethical Oversight: The Pacing Problem (Springer, 2011), and has published numerous articles on engineering ethics and societal implications of technology in engineering, law, social science, and applied ethics journals and books. [Read more]

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

Website | Twitter @DrDinoDNA Ancient DNA research has a short but sensational history, especially as the birth of the field coincided with the Jurassic Park craze. Find out how celebrity helped shape the science for better or for worse.

Ancient DNA research—the recovery of genetic material from long-dead organisms—is a discipline that developed from science fiction into a reality between the 1980s and today. Drawing on scientific, historical, and archival material, as well as original interviews with more than fifty researchers worldwide, Elizabeth Jones explores the field’s formation and explains its relationship with the media by examining its close connection to de-extinction, the science and technology of resurrecting extinct species.

In this talk, Jones reveals how the search for DNA from fossils flourished under the influence of intense press and public interest, particularly as this new line of research coincided with the book and movie Jurassic Park. She then takes on this reality, diving deeper into the nuance of celebrity to show how media interest simultaneously empowered and undermined the field, and how scientists responded to it both positively and negatively. By investigating the use and (perceived) abuse of celebrity, we arrive at an appreciation for the intricate interplay between science and media, and how the two influence one another.

• Ancient DNA: The Making of a Celebrity Science, by Elizabeth D Jones (2022)

Dr. Elizabeth Jones is the Project Coordinator in the Zanno Lab for the Cretaceous Creatures public science project at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at NCSU. She is a Historian of Science and author of the book “Ancient DNA: The Making of a Celebrity Science” (Yale University Press). Jones received her BA in History and Philosophy from NCSU, MA in History and Philosophy of Science from Florida State University, and PhD in Science and Technology Studies from University College London. Her research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the historical, philosophical, and sociological aspects of the scientific process to better understand how science happens and how it impacts society. Throughout her career, she has had first-hand experience working with paleontologists and geneticists in both the field and the lab across the US, UK, and Europe. Prior to her most recent job, Jones was a Project Coordinator and Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Cooper Lab at NCSU for a NSF grant to create a Toolkit for Data Ethics in the Participatory Sciences in partnership with the Citizen Science Association.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates

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

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

Website Understanding inclusive agricultural transformation through the lenses of climate adaptation and labor productivity.

In many lower- and middle-income countries agriculture is not only the basis for food security but also the main path toward economic prosperity for countless small-scale producers. Agriculture systems are highly heterogeneous, however, and this heterogeneity is compounded by the nearly infinite variation in the individual circumstances of those that participate in the production process. At the same time, small-scale producers face several challenges and, in many instances, compound challenges ranging from Covid and climate change to conflict and crop disease. Given these complexities, how can we focus on intentional, inclusive approaches to help transform agriculture systems such that their stewards become more resilient and more predictably on a path to prosperity? To better understand both the opportunities for agricultural transformation and the challenges associated therewith, this presentation will examine “agricultural research for development” (AR4D) through the lenses of both climate adaptation and labor productivity. Here we consider the role of innovation in these areas as a core consideration in thinking about inclusive agricultural transformation (IAT). Innovation in areas from policy to farmer services to the crops themselves must be layered together in context appropriate ways in order to realize the changes needed to improve agricultural development outcomes. From the identification of specific outcomes to the corresponding theories of change, strategies, policy and investment, inclusive agricultural transformation must be both priority-based and right-sized. While there are numerous entry points for fostering climate-sensitive and inclusive agricultural development, through this dialog we will explore the idea that simultaneous consideration of labor productivity and climate adaptation increasingly has the potential to become a cornerstone of new thinking in IAT.

• Labour productivity: The forgotten yield gap Cock J, Prager S, Meinke H, and Echeverria R. (2022) _Agricultural Systems. _doi: 10.1016/j.agsy.2022.103452. PDF

A geographer by training, Dr. Steven Prager has recently joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation after ten years as a professor of geography at the University of Wyoming and, more recently, eight years as a research scientist with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) based in Cali, Colombia. At the University of Wyoming, Steven taught and led research in a range of themes mostly centered around spatial modeling and sustainable development.

Steven later brought this experience to CIAT and the world of agricultural research for development. At CIAT, he developed and co-led several different research programs, including the “Global Futures and Strategic Foresight” activity with the Policies, Institutions, and Markets research program of the CGIAR. He also played a critical role in building out a LAC-wide and then global scale program in climate services, several efforts related to Sustainable Food Systems, and the SERVIR Amazonia program designed to bring best in class remote sensing and geospatial analysis to local communities throughout the Amazon Basin. In his new role with BMGF, Steve is working with the Foundation’s Adaptation Systems and Integration team to bring innovations in climate adaptation to serve small-scale producers throughout Africa and South Asia.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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

Website | Twitter #AgBioFEWS Focusing on environmental pressures and changing social dynamics within agriculture, the 2022 AgBioFEWS Fellows reflect on their immersive summer field experience with farming communities in eastern North Carolina.

North Carolina’s geographical and biological diversity present crop-growers with both exciting opportunities and immense challenges. Following an immersive field experience in NC’s Central and Northern Coastal Plains, AgBioFEWS Cohort 3 will provide a first-hand account of these complexities, giving close attention to recurring themes of loss and resilience.

The discussion begins with farmers’ perspectives on environmental pressures, including climate change, salt intrusion, insect resistance, and the adoption of emerging biotechnologies. Secondly, it will consider the changing social dynamics within farming communities, including issues surrounding land acquisition, market constraints, trusted expertise, farmer-to-farmer relationships, and labor concerns. Taken together, these reflections demonstrate how, in the face of constant change to both the environment and their communities, NC farmers demonstrate resilience and adaptability worthy of deeper consideration.

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 complete coursework toward a graduate minor in Genetic Engineering and Society and collaborate on an interdisciplinary cohort project.

Cohort 3 includes: Modesta Abugu, Rebekah Brown, Asa Budnick, Eric Butoto, Greg Ferraro, Adelyn Flowers, Jill Furgurson, Katrina Geist, Chris Gillespie, Nick Loschin, Amanda Mainello, Nolan Speicher, and Ruthie Stokes.

GES Colloquium is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will be held in-person in Poe 202, as well as live-streamed via Zoom. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates .

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

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