CATEGORY - SCHOOL: ARIZONA STATE

February 2, 2010

Arizona State Law Retools Innovation Center

At a ceremony last week, Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law officially recast its science and law center, adding to it further programs.

The newly-named Center for Law, Science & Innovation now features a Program in Law and Sustainability, a Public Health Law and Policy Program, and The Prevail Project, a behavioral development research initiative we covered earlier this month.

The renaming ceremony also served as an anniversary of the center’s forerunner, which has been in existence on the law school campus since 1984.  According to a school press release, the center was the country’s first “to address the special legal problems arising from rapid developments in science and technology.”  Last week’s announcement signals a more interdisciplinary approach to the subject matter.

“New advances in genomic-level manipulation allow human beings to alter our own evolutionary path…and so on,” said Dean Paul Schiff Berman.  “Such advances require multidisciplinary approaches, bringing together experts in law and policy, science, technology, ethics, and culture.”

Additional programs centered on post-conviction DNA samples, healthcare entrepreneurship, and the future of science are also proposed.

0 Comments »

# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in Law School News, School: Arizona State

January 4, 2010

Arizona State Law Initiates Project on Future Innovation

Beginning this month, a new appointment at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law will initiate a project examining how emerging technologies affect human behavior.

An author and former reporter, Joel Garreau has been named the school’s Lincoln Professor of Law, Culture and Values.  His appointment creates institutional framework for his research on The Prevail Project: Wise Governance for Challenging Futures.  As director, Garreau and the project will take “an unprecedented look at the hinge in history at which the human race has arrived,” as indicated by a school press release.  Such research will examine how modern technologies impact human development.

According to Garreau, “the critical issue, of course, is not technology, but where all this takes society.”

Of the project’s name, the term “prevail” refers to a successful co-evolution of society and such emerging technologies.

Said Paul Schiff Berman, dean of the law school: “[Garreau] will be a major addition to the Center for Law, Science, and Innovation, linking the extraordinary work in science law and policy being done here to the broader national and international policy audience.  His new think tank promises to be at the cutting edge of thought about how our humanity can be maintained amidst rapidly growing scientific innovation.”

Indeed while the Prevail Project will be housed within the College of Law, its broad research scope speaks to an interdisciplinary nature.  Therefore other facets of the university at large, such as the ASU Center for Nanotechnology in Society, will participate in the development of the project and its explorations.

0 Comments »

# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in Law School News, School: Arizona State