Project News
Proposed Graduate Interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Science & Technology Policy
The Center recently submitted to the University of Colorado graduate school a proposal for a new Interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Science and Technology Policy. The program is intended to provide graduate students with an opportunity to supplement their disciplinary or interdisciplinary training with rigorous knowledge and useful skills at the nexus or interface of science, technology, policy and society. It will train graduate students to better understand the broader societal role of their specialized training and will focus on
- the relationships between knowledge and decision making in the context of societal problems with political, technical, and social complexities and uncertainties;
- the roles and responsibilities of the expert in society, business, politics, and policy, and;
- the development of proficiency in specific areas of science and technology policy, including the acquisition of methodological skills, drawing upon the breadth of science and engineering, social science, humanities and other expertise at the University of Colorado and its partners.
Check the Center’s website for an upcoming certificate program website.
“Our Science, Their Science”
Visiting Scholar Myanna Lahsen has been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation for a project entitled “’Our’ Science, ‘Their’ Science – The role of territory and translocality in competing scientific understandings of Amazonia’s role in the global carbon cycle.” This project involves empirical study of scientists’ competing scientific hypotheses related to the role of the Amazon in the global carbon cycle and hence in human-induced climate change. In particular, the project is designed to reveal socio-political patterns among differences in positions on the issue among scientists from Brazil, the US and Europe and the extent to which these patterns do or do not map on to traditional territorial boundaries. Myanna received a Ph.D in Cultural Anthropology from Rice University in 1998 and has held postdoctoral positions at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.
Science, Technology and Security Symposium Draft Report Now Available
A draft of the report of the Symposium on Science, Technology and Security held October 10-11, 2002, is now online.
The report is organized into several sections, most importantly:
- Integrated Summary, which seeks to distill the broad themes of the Symposium for science and technology policy.
- Panel Leader Remarks, the summary comments of Lewis Branscomb, David Guston, and Eugene Skolnikoff.
- Breakout Group Reports, which summarize the work of the working groups that addressed bioterrorism, critical infrastructure, energy security, information technology, and water security.
Comments are welcomed (pielke@colorado.edu).
International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP)
The website of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP) has now moved to the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. The mission of the Association is to embrace a broad understanding of environmental philosophy, to welcome a diversity of approaches to environmental issues, to encourage joining with other academic disciplines, and to support interdisciplinary scholarship. Bob Frodeman of the CIRES Policy Center is co-founder and director of interdisciplinary activities within IAEP. IAEP is a resource for those interested in questions of environmental ethics, justice, and equity, and how these questions might be integrated with research and education across disciplines. For more information visit the IAEP site or email frodeman@colorado.edu.
Global Climate Change and Society
GCCS will launch its third year on June 16. This summer program sponsored by the National Science Foundation brings 12 undergraduates from around the country to Boulder, Colorado, to spend 8 weeks exploring the nature of scientific knowledge--its epistemological character, and its social and philosophic implications--and the contribution that social scientific and humanistic perspectives play in public policy debates.
RAA-CU Joint Internship Program
The RAA-CU Joint Internship Program is a pilot program beginning in the summer of 2003 that places science or policy graduate students with reinsurance companies for approximately 3 months. Following a week in London at which they will take a short course on catastrophe modeling sponsored by Risk Management Solutions, students will be placed with companies in the reinsurance industry to work with decision makers who use science in making decisions or to inform decision-making. The program will be evaluated at the end of this summer for continuation or expansion next summer.
