CAREER: Reconfiguring Life: Care and control in bioengineering

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This proposal was funded in part by the Ethical and Responsible Research Program.There is growing interest in promoting responsible research and innovation around new biotechnologies, with the aim of fostering more socially robust and inclusive technologies. This CAREER project focuses specifically on the role of care in responsible innovation for bioengineering. It documents the growth and development of "biofoundries," a new type of facility for high-throughput design and genetic engineering being built in academic and industry settings. Biofoundries are working to make bioengineered molecules, materials and organisms for a wide range of research and industry sectors, and are positioning themselves as being able to make significant contributions to a more bio-based economy. This research uses qualitative and ethnographic methods to trace the "politics of care" in biofoundries at different scales: identifying the many ways care is manifest in the day-to-day practices of setting up and running a biofoundry, as well as the broader values guiding investment in and governance of biofoundries. These findings are being used to design and test tools to help biofoundry practitioners and undergraduate biomedical engineering students reconceptualize care and responsibility in more explicit and intentional ways. The long-term goal of these efforts is to help transform the culture of bioengineering education and practice towards more inclusive and sustainable outcomes.Using qualitative data collected through interviews, site visits and participant-observation, this project has three objectives: (1) to trace care practices in the building of high-throughput facilities for genetic engineering, (2) to examine the broader social and political contexts within which these facilities are being built, and how these are shaping visions of governance, and (3) to develop experimental tools and practices for re-shaping governance in and of biofoundries. This project builds on growing interest in practices and politics of care by science & technology studies (STS) scholars, in this case making connections with work on the governance of emerging technologies to advance theory and practice of governance. Research findings will generate a rich portrait of changing practices, relationships and accountabilities in a contemporary, high-stakes bioengineering venture. This project will deepen the methodological toolbox of existing responsible research & innovation initiatives, by developing interventions centered specifically around care. It also contributes to ongoing methodological discussions regarding the role of STS in engaging with and shaping emerging technologies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.