The involvement of social scientists in nanotechnology and synthetic biology

• Start date: 01 August 2010
• End date: 31 July 2011

Nanotechnology and synthetic biology are emerging technologies with the potential to be both transformative and socially disruptive. Both have involved social scientists from the outset, and this involvement is becoming increasingly important in governance (ie, choices about which technologies to develop and how).

This Collaborative Visiting Scholarship will help to build new institutional connections between leading centres working on the governance of emerging technologies: the ESRC Genomics Forum and Innogen at the University of Edinburgh, and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) at Arizona State University.

The grant will support two researchers from the University of Edinburgh to spend 3 weeks each at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society.

The aims of this visit are:

• to start developing long-term institutional links between the centres
• to learn from the considerable experience of CNS in developing training programmes and working collaboratively with scientists and engineers
• to carry out comparative research on the involvement of social scientists in the emerging fields of nanotechnology and synthetic biology.