News & talks
Recent notes
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Transforming American Biosecurity
Summer 2026A companion piece to the case for foundational reform of US biosecurity and biosafety governance, developed further in the CSPO talk.
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Forging a New Paradigm for Biosecurity Governance
Spring 2026This talk outlines how the institutions we have built to protect us from the harms of biotechnology are inadequate for today’s challenges and provides a pathway to a new paradigm in biosecurity governance.
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Ethics in the Lab Final Report
Fall 2023A four-year Harvard project on integrating ethical, legal, and social engagement into early-stage technological research, which provided a model for changing practice, policy, and pedagogy that extends to other innovation centers.
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Biorisk Management Casebook
Spring 2023It’s really hard to talk about the actual practice of biorisk management. After brainstorming about this at a 2018 NTI workshop in London with Megan Palmer (Stanford) and Stella Hurley (Science), NTI…
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What Is Biosecurity for the Twenty-First Century?
Spring 2022What do we need to change about biosecurity governance, and how should we do that? In a recent webinar hosted by Issues in Science and Technology and the Consortium for Science, Policy, & Outcomes, I…
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When all research is dual use
Spring 2022It is a time for a change in the way we understand the relationship between science, security, and society. In my recent piece in Issues in Science and Technology, I argue that we need systemic…
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Making Security Viral: Shifting Engineering Biology Culture and Publishing
Winter 2022The ability to construct, synthesize, and edit genes and genomes at scale and with speed enables, in synergy with other tools of engineering biology, breakthrough applications with far-reaching…
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iGEM and Gene Drives: A Case Study for Governance
Winter 2022Less than a year after the first published paper on CRISPR-CAS9 gene drives, an undergraduate team in the international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition were trying to create one…
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ABSA 1st Biosecurity Symposium Keynote
Winter 2021The American Biological Safety Association (ABSA) International is getting serious about biosecurity. Over the last several years, it has initiated the development of a biosecurity credential for…
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Stakeholder Engagement Workshop on the Implementation of the United States Government Policy for Institutional Oversight of Life Sciences Dual Use Research of Concern: Workshop Report
Winter 2021This report documents the discussions of the 2017 Stakeholder Engagement Workshop on the Implementation of the United States Government Policy for Institutional Oversight of Life Sciences Dual Use…
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Embrace Experimentation in Biosecurity Governance
Spring 2020Biological science and its applications are rapidly evolving, and to keep up with emerging security concerns, governance of biosecurity applications should evolve as well. In a Policy Forum…
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Comment for the Department of Commerce ANPRM on “Review of Controls on Certain Emerging Technologies”
Winter 2018A public comment to the Department of Commerce ANPRM on defining emerging technologies for export control, with 13 recommendations on how ETTAC and the interagency process should approach the task.
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Review of Controls for Emerging Technology
Fall 2018[UPDATE: read my COMMENT! I am hoping this comment will be very useful to anyone else submitting comments.]
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The use and abuse of science and technology: rethinking dual-use
Fall 2018Ten years spent circling the concept of dual-use: why biosecurity governance leans so heavily on a duality between legitimate and illegitimate use, read through Foucault’s analysis of othering and power.
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This is not your father’s biosecurity: Experiments in novel security governance at the edge of innovation
Fall 2018I spent this week in Fukuoka, Japan at the World Social Science Forum, a gathering of national and international science academies and other research and professional bodies. At the invitation of the…
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Course Syllabus:: Making Security: Science, Technology, and the Governance of Threats
Spring 2018This summer, I am a Guest Professor at the University of Vienna’s Department of Science, Technology, and Society. I’ll be teaching a course called, “Making Security: Science, Technology, and the…
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Anomaly handling and the politics of gene drives
Winter 2017Back in 2015, Megan Palmer and I agreed to write a paper as part of an NSF grant on Gene Drives: A Deliberative Workshop to Develop Frameworks for Research and Governance. Over many iterations, we…
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Report out: Building STS Programs lunchtime workshop
Fall 2017There is a significant amount of largely invisible work that gets done within the STS community to keep it going and continuing building it. In an effort to make that work more visible, during the 4S…
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Constructing New Security Concerns in the Life Sciences
Winter 2017The idea that there is a set truth of the world that scientists must identify, codify, and disseminate in full is literally set in stone at the National Academies. It may come as a surprise, then…
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Knowledge and Security
Winter 2017The new Handbook of Science and Technology Studies is now available, and I was lucky enough to work with a set of colleagues on a chapter about “Knowledge and Security”.