I teach the largest undergraduate bioethics course at UC Berkeley, and I am on the Center for Genetics and Society advisory board.
In my research, I ask the following questions: what is the role of science in regulating the environment? What is the role of ethics, law, and politics to shape emerging biotechnologies? These are two of the major questions I focus on. Working at the intersection of law, ethics, and Science and Technology Studies (STS), I analyze the politics of health and environment, the governance of new technologies and the mutual formation of the science and environmental governance. My program of teaching, research, policy and outreach seeks to help guide science and innovation to better address the most pressing environmental and health problems. I do this in part by studying emerging technologies like GMOs, genomics, ans synthetic biology; property and intellectual property, environmental regulation, food safety, geoengineering, and public health; and law and power at multiple scales of governance.
I am an Associate Director of the Berkeley Science, Technology and Society Center and serve on the Governing Council of the Science and Democracy Network.
I am also a Greenwall Faculty Scholar in Bioethics.