Exponential
advances in the life sciences, particularly in the realm of biotechnology, have
been held to raise the classic concerns of "dual-use" research: the
same technologies that propel scientific advances critical to human health, the
environment and economic growth also could be misused to develop biological
weapons, including for bioterrorism. However, there is significant
disagreement as to whether this depiction appropriately frames the nature of
the problem. Some scientists have characterized the prevailing policy
discourse on the life sciences as the "half-pipe of doom," a bipolar
approach that artificially disaggregates and decontextualizes the promise and
peril of advances in the life sciences. The panel will discuss proposals
to address such concerns, focusing on whether the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) offers a transferable model of scientific and policy
consensus-building for issues of safety and security of biotechnology.
Stephen J. Stedman joined CISAC in 1997 as a senior research scholar, and was named a senior
fellow at FSI and CISAC and professor of political science (by courtesy) in
2002. He served as the center's acting co-director for the 2002-2003 academic
year. Currently he directs the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy
Studies at Stanford and CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International
Security Studies. His current research addresses the future of international
organizations and institutions, an area of study inspired by his recent work at
the United Nations. In the fall of 2003 he was recruited to serve as the
research director of the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and
Change. Upon completion of the panel's report, A More Secure World: Our
Shared Responsibility, Annan asked Stedman to stay on at the U.N. as a
special advisor with the rank of assistant secretary-general, to help gain
worldwide support in implementing the panel's recommendations. Following the
U.N. world leaders' summit in September 2005, during which more than 175 heads
of state agreed upon a global security agenda developed from the panel's work,
Stedman returned to CISAC. Before coming to Stanford, Stedman was an associate
professor of African studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced
International Studies in Washington, D.C.
He has served as a consultant to the United Nations on issues of peacekeeping
in civil war, light weapons proliferation and conflict in Africa,
and preventive diplomacy. In 2000 Scott Sagan and he founded the CISAC Interschool
Honors Program in International Security Studies. Stedman received his PhD in
political science from Stanford University
in 1988.
Donald Kennedy is the editor-in-chief of Science, the journal
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a CESP
senior fellow by courtesy. His present research program entails policy
on such trans-boundary environmental problems as: major land-use
changes; economically-driven alterations in agricultural practice;
global climate change; and the development of regulatory policies.
Kennedy
has served on the faculty of Stanford University from 1960 to the
present. From 1980 to 1992 he served as President of Stanford
University. He was Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration
from 1977-79. Previously at Stanford, he was as director of the Program
in Human Biology from 1973-1977 and chair of the Department of Biology
from 1964-1972.
Kennedy is a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American
Philosophical Society. He served on the National Commission for Public
Service and the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and
Government, and as a founding director of the Health Effects Institute.
He currently serves as a director of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, and as co-chair of the National Academies' Project
on Science, Technology and Law. Kennedy received AB and PhD degrees in
biology from Harvard University.
Drew Endy is a synthetic biologist with the Stanford Department of Bioengineering. He was a junior fellow and later an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT prior to coming to Stanford in September 2008 as an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering. Endy's research focus is on synthetic biology. With researchers at MIT he works on the engineering of standardized biological components, devices, and parts, collectively known as "BioBricks." He is one of several founders of the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and invented an abstraction hierarchy for integrated genetic systems. Endy is known for his opposition to limited ownership and supports free access to genetic information. He has been one of the early promoters of open-source biology, and helped to start the Biobricks Foundation, a non-profit supporting open-source biology.
Tarun Chhabra is a JD candidate and Paul and Daisy Soros
Fellow at Harvard Law School, and a doctoral candidate in international
relations at Oxford University. Tarun previously worked in the Executive
Office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and on the staff of Annan's
High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. He also served as a
consultant-advisor to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry on nuclear non-proliferation
and disarmament initiatives. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Russia at the Moscow
State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) and received a Marshall
Scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford, where he earned a MPhil in
international relations and was an instructor in international relations at
Stanford House. He holds a BA from Stanford University, where he worked
at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project and was in the honors program at
CISAC. Tarun is a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project and a member
of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. He also is co-chair of Working Group 2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and will lead the fifth assessment report on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. The author of more than 200 scientific publications, Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. Field’s work with models includes studies on the global distribution of carbon sources and sinks, and studies on environmental consequences of expanding biomass energy. Field has served on many national and international committees related to global ecology and climate change and was a coordinating lead author for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Field has testified before House and Senate committees and has appeared on media from NPR “Science Friday” to BBC “Your World Today”. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Field received his PhD from Stanford in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution for Science since 1984.
FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of 
