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Science Café Moves to Arizona Science Center in Downtown Phoenix

January 19 - Adaptive Technologies for the Central Nervous System: Are We Changing What It Means to be Human?

CNS-ASU's partnership with the Arizona Science Center officially kicked off with the January Science Café. Situated in the spacious lobby of the Arizona Science Center against a backdrop advertising the center's Body Worlds 3 exhibit, January's café was presented by Dr. Ranu Jung, Director of the Center for Adaptive Neural Systems in the Biodesign Institute, and bioethicist Dr. Jason Robert, Assistant Professor in the School of Life Sciences. Audience questions reflected concerns with end uses of the described technology, including wondering about the directions that the Department of Defense - which funds some of the research - might want to take it, such as to enhance the abilities of soldiers. Other questions concerned who would have access to this technology, what its metric of "success" will be, and Jung's vision for the radical distribution of this technology through society.

February 16 - Why Things (Still) Don't Fit: Human Variation and Ergonomics in the 21st Century

Ever wonder why, in an age of computer-aided design, digital human modeling and virtual prototyping, some clothes continue to fit so poorly? The good and not-so-good approaches that designers use to accommodate body sizes and shapes in today's population was the topic of the February café, presented by Dr. Claire Gordon, a research scientist in Biological Anthropology with the Army Materiel Command and 2006-07 Visiting Scholar in the School for Human Evolution and Social Change, along with CNS-ASU Post-Doc Dr. Ira Bennett. Gordon drew on her experience in Army ergonomics to recount how the U.S. Army came to recognize design standards that were unsuitable for women and minorities. Audience questions included concerns about how design issues continue to impact the safety of soldiers.

Hispanic Leaders Coming to ASU for Nanotechnology Panel Discussion

Three esteemed Hispanic representatives from government, academia and industry will discuss nantechnology in their respective fields at a panel sponsored by More Graduate Education @ Mountain States Alliance, the Western Alliance to Expand Student Opportunities, and CNS-ASU. Moderated by Dr. Anthony Garcia, Professor of Bioengineering in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at ASU, the panel will feature Dr. Manuel Marquez-Sanchez, Senior Scientist and Director of the Nanotek Consortium at Kraft Foods, Dr. Carlos A. Gonzàlez, Director of the NIST Center for Theoretical and Computational Nanosciences at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Dr. Vladimiro Mujica, Deputy Director of the NIST Center for Theoretical and Computational Nanosciences. The panel will be held on March 21st in the Biodesign Institute Auditorium from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, and is open to all interested parties.

AZ Nanotechnology Cluster Symposium: "Real Progress, Real Products"

The second annual Arizona Nanotechnology Cluster Symposium will be held on Friday, March 23, 2007 at the Scottsdale Community College Performing Arts Center. This will be an all-day event with participation from local, national and international organizations. In line with its theme, "Real Progress, Real Products," the symposium will assess and inform participants about the current status of nanotechnology. Presenters and participants from ASU include: Dr. Stuart Lindsay, Director, Center for Single Molecule Biophysics; Dr. Sayfe Kiaei, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering; Dr. Sandwip Dey, School of Materials; Dr. Stephen Goodnick, Associate Vice President for Research, ASU Research and Economic Affairs. To register for the symposium, visit the AZ Nanotechnology Cluster's website.

New Biodesign Fellow

CNS-ASU is pleased to welcome Parul Agrawal as its newest Biodesign Fellow. Parul is a PhD student at the new School of Materials and works in Frederic Zenhausern’s research group at the Center of Applied Nanobiosciences. Parul has a B.S. in electrical engineering from India and M.S.Tech in Microelectronics system technology from ASU at the Polytechnic campus. She has worked on studying the aging effects of lead-free solders for her master thesis, and is currently working on nano-scale patterning of biological media for microphenotyping of diseases. Parul has also worked as an IT consultant in India, and interned as a research assistant for Teach for America, Phoenix.

Fiedeler discussed the problems that technology assessment confronts when attempting to assess the societal impact of nanotechnology, given that the technology is defined by size instead of by other more specifying parameters. He presented a new approach called Vision Assessment, which aims at analyzing the debate on an emerging technology in a structured way. The presentation included a brief description of the methodological framing behind Vision Assessment.
Fiedeler's PowerPoint presentation.   Audio version of Fiedeler's presentation.

Rip discussed two types of sociotechnical scenario exercises. In the first, possible futures resulting from the momentum emerging in specific domains of nanotechnology (e.g., lab-on-a-chip) are traced. Changes in science and industry structures are considered along with other societal aspects. Rip refers to this analysis as “concentric” scenarios, which are used in strategy articulation workshops with a variety of actors. The second type of scenario features multi-level analysis explicitly, where the dynamics of nanoscale science and engineering (NSE)developments are coupled to different dynamics at other levels such as funding, firm strategies, regulation and political debate. The linkages between the levels are what shape further developments. These sociotechnical scenarios are less concentric than the first type and are relevant to political and civil society actors. Rip presented some early results for NSE in food packaging.
Rip's PowerPoint presentation.   Audio version of Rip's presentation.