Ethics Education and Scientific and Engineering Research - Biographies

BIOGRAPHIES

Dr. John F. Ahearne
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
John Ahearne is Executive Director Emeritus of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, and Emeritus Director of the Sigma Xi Ethics Program. Prior to working at Sigma Xi, Dr. Ahearne served as Vice President and Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future and as Commissioner and Chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He worked in the White House Energy Office and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy. He also worked on weapons systems analysis, force structure, and personnel policy as Deputy and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Serving in the U.S. Air Force (USAF), he worked on nuclear weapons effects and taught at the USAF Academy. Dr. Ahearne’s research interests include risk analysis, risk communication, energy analysis, reactor safety, radioactive waste, nuclear weapons, materials disposition, science policy, and environmental management. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1996 for his leadership in energy policy and the safety and regulation of nuclear power. Dr. Ahearne has served on many NRC Committees in the past twenty years, and has chaired a number of these. In 1966, Dr. Ahearne earned his PhD in Physics from Princeton University.


Melissa S. Anderson
University of Minnesota
Melissa S. Anderson, PhD, is professor of higher education, director of the Postsecondary Education Research Institute, and coordinator of the graduate program in higher education at the University of Minnesota. Her NIH- and NSF-funded research over the past 20 years has been in the areas of research integrity, scientific misconduct, graduate education and academy-industry relations. This work has focused largely on contextual effects on scientists' behavior. Her current research is on international dimensions of research integrity. Dr. Anderson has served on the review panel of the NSF Science and Society Program. She wrote the Ethical Principles of the Association for the Study of Higher Education and served two terms on the ASHE Board of Directors. She is a co-author of Ethical Standards of the American Educational Research Association: Cases and Commentary and currently serves on the inaugural Ethics Committee of the Association. She serves on the editorial boards of Accountability in Research, Research in Higher Education, and the ASHE-ERIC Report Series. She has advised 34 doctoral and 36 masters students to completion.

Dr. Anderson received her undergraduate and masters degrees in mathematics and her PhD in higher education, after which she held successive postdoctoral fellowships in the area of scientific integrity, funded by NSF and by the National Academy of Education. She is currently organizing a national conference, sponsored by the federal Office of Research Integrity, on Challenges and Tensions in International Research Collaboration, which will take place at the University of Minnesota, October 2-3, 2008.


Francisco J. Ayala
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California
Francisco J. Ayala is University Professor and Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. On 12 June 2002, President George W. Bush awarded him the National Medal of Science at the White House. From 1994 to 2001, Ayala was a member of the U.S. President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. He has been President and Chairman of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1993-1996), and President of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society of the U.S (2004-2005). Dr. Ayala is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and numerous foreign academies, and has received numerous prizes and honorary degrees. He has published more than 900 articles and is author or editor of 31 books. Dr. Ayala has revolutionized evolution theory, making singular contributions not only to his discipline but also to education, philosophy, ethics, religion, and national science policy. His scientific research focuses on population and evolutionary genetics, including the origin of species, genetic diversity of populations, the origin of malaria, the population structure of parasitic protozoa, and the molecular clock of evolution. He also writes about the interface between religion and science, and on philosophical issues concerning epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of biology. He was a chief witness in the creationist trials in Arkansas in 1981 that prevented religion from being taught as science in the classroom. Dr. Ayala has been called the “Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology” by The New York Times.


Stephanie J. Bird
Science and Engineering Ethics
Stephanie J. Bird is an independent consultant and co-Editor-in-Chief of Science and Engineering Ethics, an international publication that explores ethical issues of concern to scientists and engineers. Now in its 14th year, the journal is widely abstracted and indexed and has been cited by the National Academies as a leading resource for scholarly articles on research integrity. Dr Bird was formerly Special Assistant to the Provost and Vice President for Research of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she worked on the development of educational programs that address ethical issues in research and the professional responsibilities of scientists and engineers. She is a laboratory-trained neuro-scientist whose current research interests emphasize the ethical, legal and social policy implications of scientific research, especially in the area of neuroscience. Dr. Bird has written numerous articles on issues in the responsible conduct of research and on mentoring and other responsibilities of science and engineering professionals. She also lectures and conducts workshops at professional societies, conferences, medical schools, and research and teaching institutions in the United States and other countries.


Jason Borenstein
School of Public Policy, Georgia Tech
Jason Borenstein is the Director of Graduate Research Ethics Programs and the co-Director of the Center for Ethics and Technology at Georgia Tech. During his time at Georgia Tech, he has taught graduate courses on the subject of the responsible conduct of research (RCR) and undergraduate courses such as Ethical Theories, Ethics & the Technical Professions, Philosophy of Science, and Science & Values in the Policy Process. His current research interests include ethics assessment, conflicts of interest, human subjects research, evolution & intelligent design, and the ethics of emerging technologies.

Dr. Borenstein is also the founder and editor of the Journal of Philosophy, Science & Law and the Director of the CITI-RCR for Engineers project. During the summer of 2001, he worked as an intern for the National Academy of Sciences’ Science, Technology, and Law Program. During the summer of 2000, he worked as an intern for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law Program. Dr. Borenstein received his doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Miami (FL) in May of 2001.


Paul Citron
Retired Vice President of Technology Policy and Academic Relations, Medtronic.
Mr. Citron joined Medtronic in 1972 and worked in various positions until he retired in December 2003. Most recently, he was the Vice President of Technology Policy and Academic Relations, a role in which he had responsibility for identifying and addressing public policy matters that affect medical technology innovation. Prior to May 2002, Mr. Citron held the following positions: Vice President of Science and Technology (1988-2002), Vice President, Ventures Technology (1985-1988), Vice President, Applied Concepts Research (1982-1985), Director, Applied Concepts Research (1979-1982), Design and Staff Engineer, Project and Program Manager (1972-1979). Mr. Citron was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003, was elected Founding Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in January 1993, has twice won the American College of Cardiology Governor's Award for Excellence and, in 1980, was inducted as a Fellow of the Medtronic Bakken Society. He was voted IEEE Young Electrical Engineer of the Year in 1979. He has authored many publications and holds several medical device pacing-related patents. In 1980 he was presented with Medtronic's "Invention of Distinction" award for his role as the co-inventor of the tined pacing lead. Mr. Citron received a BS in electrical engineering from Drexel University in 1969 and an MS in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1972. He was elected to Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu.


Daniel D. Denecke
Program Director, Best Practices at the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).
Daniel D. Denecke received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and has served as faculty at the University of Maryland-College Park and Georgetown University. He currently directs the Project for Scholarly Integrity, a multi-year initiative to support the creation of model programs that integrate research ethics and scholarly integrity into the structure and climate of the entire graduate school research experience. Supported by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), the CGS project will work closely with five institutions to develop models for expanding and embedding ethics and responsible conduct of research education projects into graduate education.

Dr. Denecke has authored and co-authored numerous publications and contributed significantly across a wide range of CGS initiatives in the best practice domain and in the area of international engagement. He is co-author of Preparing Future Faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2003) and of Ph.D. Attrition and Completion: Policy, Numbers, Leadership and Next Steps (2004), which reviews empirical studies on the topic, discusses the institutional factors that contribute to graduate-degree completion, and outlines salutary interventions and next steps for improving completion rates in graduate education. At CGS, Dr. Denecke has directed the Ph.D. Completion Project, Phase I, a major national initiative to address the underlying factors of students’ departure from graduate study. Prior to working on these projects, he managed the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) program at CGS, to promote and institutionalize professional development programs for doctoral students aspiring to faculty positions. He has published and presented in national and international forums on graduate education and transatlantic mobility, the Bologna Process and U.S. graduate admissions and, and joint and dual degrees.


Dr. Kathleen Flint
National Postdoctoral Association
Kathleen Flint is project manager at the National Postdoctoral Association, where she manages both the Postdoc Leadership Mentoring Project and the “Bring RCR Home” project. Prior, she was Assistant Director of the Reinvention Center at Stony Brook University, a national center focused on enhancing undergraduate education at research universities. She has also served as adjunct professor in Stony Brook’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 2004, she spent a year in residence at the National Science Foundation (NSF) where she was a Science and Technology Policy Fellow sponsored by AAAS. Previous to that, Dr. Flint was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Gemini Observatory North and a Carnegie Fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. She has a Ph.D. and M.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics (2001, 1997) from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a B.S. in Math and Astronomy (1995) from the University of Arizona.


Mark S. Frankel
Director, Scientific Freedom, Responsibility & Law Program, AAAS
Mark S. Frankel, PhD, has been director of the Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law Program at AAAS since 1990. He develops and manages AAAS’s activities related to professional ethics, science and society, and science and law. At AAAS he has directed projects on research integrity and scientific misconduct; human enhancement; the ethical and legal implications of genetic testing; the ethical and policy implications of human stem cell research and inheritable genetic modification; bioethics consulting for industry; and the implications of advances in neuroscience research for the legal system. He has also supervised the production of such reports as Good, Better, Best: The Human Quest for Enhancement (2007); Select Bibliography and Resources on the Responsible Conduct of Research (2005); Making Each Vote Count: A Research Agenda for Electronic Voting, (2004); Neuroscience and the Law: Brain, Mind, and the Scales of Justice (2004); and Human Inheritable Genetic Modifications: Assessing Scientific, Ethical, Religious, and Policy Issues (2000).

Dr. Frankel is a former member of the Board of Directors of the National Patient Safety Foundation and currently serves on the Board of the Food and Drug Law Institute. He is on the editorial boards of Science and Engineering Ethics, Ethics & Behavior, Professional Ethics, and the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. He is editor of AAAS’s quarterly publication, Professional Ethics Report, and a Fellow of AAAS.


Julia Frugoli
Department of Genetics & Biochemistry, CAFLS, Clemson University
Julia Frugoli is an associate professor in the department of Genetics & Biochemistry in the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences (CAFLS) at Clemson University. Her research focuses on the molecular genetic control of nodule number in Medicago truncatula, currently funded by the NSF. Her lab studies how the plant controls the number of nodules that form, a regulation that involves communication between the shoot and root of the plant and has implications for how plants in general communicate messages throughout the organism.

As a graduate student at Dartmouth College on an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship, she attended the first APPE Graduate Research Ethics Education workshop, and has made research ethics a special focus ever since. Her postdoctoral work at Texas A&M was followed by a faculty position at Clemson in 2000. Currently a Special Projects Fellow for Clemson’s Rutland Center for Ethics Across the Curriculum, among her teaching responsibilities is a required graduate course “Issues in Research” that addresses professionalism and research ethics. She is also a member of the CAFLS Graduate Academic Integrity Committee and chair of Clemson’s Faculty Graduate Advisory Council. Recent awards include CAFLS Undergraduate Teacher of the Year in 2007 and Clemson’s Sigma Xi Young Investigator of the Year in 2008.


Hugh Gusterson
George Mason University
Hugh Gusterson is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at George Mason University. He received his B.A. in modern history from Cambridge University in 1980, his M.Sc. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982, and his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University in 1992. From 1992-2006 he taught at MIT as assistant, then associate professor of anthropology and science studies.

A specialist on the history and culture of the nuclear weapons complex, Gusterson is the author of Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). He is co-editor of Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of Danger (University of Minnesota Press, 1999) and Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong (University of California Press, 2005). His articles have appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, New Scientist, The Sciences, the American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Anthropological Quarterly, Social Research, Alternatives, and Science, Technology and Human Values. He has published op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune and the Livermore Independent.

Gusterson’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and by MIT’s Levitan Prize. He has been a visiting scholar at the School of American Research and a visiting professor in public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.


Joseph J. Helble
Dartmouth College
Joseph J. Helble is Professor of Engineering and the 12th Dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. Prior to joining Dartmouth in 2005, Dr. Helble was the Roger Revelle Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), enabling him to spend an academic year addressing technology and environmental policy issues in the office of U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. From 1995-2005, Dr. Helble was a member and later chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Connecticut, with research in the areas of air pollution, CO2 capture, and nanoscale materials production. He also initiated what has become a campus-wide program to produce biodiesel fuel from waste vegetable oil. From 1987-1995, he was employed as a research scientist and manager at Physical Sciences Inc. in Andover MA. In 1993, he also worked at U.S. EPA headquarters in Washington DC as a science and policy fellow of AAAS.

Dr. Helble has served on several EPA Science Advisory Board panels, and is presently on the editorial boards of two scientific journals. He is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the University of Vermont College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. Dr. Helble is the author of over 100 publications in the areas of air pollution, aerosols, and nanoscale ceramics, and 3 U.S. patents related to nanoscale powder production. He was a recipient of a young faculty Career Award from NSF, an outstanding young faculty award from the U. Connecticut School of Engineering, and the university’s inaugural environmental faculty leadership award. He holds a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University, and is a 1987 chemical engineering Ph.D. graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


J. Britt Holbrook
University of North Texas
J. Britt Holbrook was admitted in 1988 as a Georgia M. Wilkins Scholar to the University of the South (Sewanee, Tennessee), from where he graduated (magna cum laude, with Honors in Philosophy, and having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa) in 1992. He then went on to study at Emory University, from where he was awarded his PhD in Philosophy in 2004. His dissertation, “Selfing Nietzsche,” defends a Nietzschean view of moral enquiry against the direct challenge put forth by Alasdair MacIntyre in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. Since January 2005 Holbrook has served as Research Assistant Professor within the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas (UNT). He has also held teaching positions in philosophy at Emory University and at Georgia State University, both located in Atlanta, Georgia. Holbrook’s most recent teaching experience was as co-instructor of a two-week field course in socioecological conservation in southernmost sub-Antarctic Chile. Holbrook’s current research focuses on interdisciplinarity, peer review, and the relationship between science, technology, and society. He is especially interested in the incorporation of societal impacts considerations into the peer review process of publicly supported funding agencies (e.g., NSF’s “Broader Impacts” Merit Review Criterion). Holbrook was Principle Investigator on a grant from the National Science Foundation for a research workshop on “Making Sense of the ‘Broader Impacts’ of Science and Technology,” held August 5-7 in Golden, Colorado. Since August 2007, he has also served as Managing Editor for the Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, and in September 2008, Holbrook will become Associate Director of UNT’s new Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity.


Chuck Huff
St. Olaf College
Chuck Huff was born and raised in the deep south and migrated to Minnesota where he is now is Professor of Psychology at St. Olaf College. There he teaches social psychology, ethics, and writing. He is currently doing empirical research on the moral psychology of computer professionals, having identified and interviewed moral exemplars in this profession. This work has resulted in a multidimensional model of influences on the successful performance of the virtues in computing: personality (PR), integration of morality into the self (IM), moral ecology (ME), and moral skills and knowledge, (S), PRIMES. This model brings together diverse literatures in virtue ethics, moral psychology, expertise, mental models, personality, and organizations. It has significant implications for how we might teach ethical action to computer professionals, other engineers and design professionals, and scientists. It also makes recommendations about what we need to measure to construct a complete picture of sustained ethical action in a profession. On sabbatical, he will be writing a book based on the model and the psychological research that underlies it.

Chuck has had longstanding commitment to shaping the computer science curriculum in computer ethics. He was the primary author on the ImpactCS project’s 1st report, (1995) the first effort to gather a national panel of experts on social and ethical issues in computing to recommend a curriculum. He has led workshops with Keith Miller & Deborah Johnson in 2000-2002 (with NSF funding) and with Dianne Martin for PKAL. He was also a member of the ACM/IEEE focus group to revise the Social & Professional Issues section of Computing Curriculum 2001.


Deborah G. Johnson
University of Virginia
Deborah G. Johnson is the Anne Shirley Carter Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics and Chair of the Department of Science, Technology, and Society in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences of the University of Virginia. Professor Johnson received the John Barwise prize from the American Philosophical Association in 2004; the Sterling Olmsted Award from the Liberal Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education in 2001; and the ACM SIGCAS Making a Difference Award in 2000.

Johnson is the author/editor of more than a half dozen books. Her most recent book Technology and Society: Engineering our Sociotechnical Future (co-edited with J. Wetmore) is scheduled fto appear in November (MIT Press, 2008), and the 4th edition of Computer Ethics (Prentice Hall) is currently in production. Other books include Women, Gender, and Technology (co-edited with M.F. Fox and S. Rosser, University of Illinois Press, 2006); Computers, Ethics, and Social Values (co-edited with H. Nissenbaum, Prentice Hall, 1995); and Ethical Issues in Engineering (Prentice Hall, 1991). As an interdisciplinary scholar, Johnson has published over 50 papers on a wide range of topics and in a variety of journals and edited volumes. She co-edits Ethics and Information Technology.


Kelly Laas
Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions Illinois Institute of Technology
Kelly Laas is the Librarian/Information Researcher at the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions (CSEP) at the Illinois Institute of Technology. During her three years at the Center, she has supervised a number of projects relating to the development of online ethics resources and collections, including the management of CSEP’s large Online Codes of Ethics collection and the development of the NanoEthicsBank, a web-based bibliographic database of materials on the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology. She is also the librarian for the OpenSeminar for Research Ethics, a NSF-funded project that is in the midst of refining an online, community-oriented, collaborative responsible conduct of research course. Ms. Laas received her MLS in 2005 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a member of the College and Research Libraries division of the American Library Association and the Chicago Association of Solo Librarians.


Felice J. Levine
American Educational Research Association
Felice J. Levine serves as Executive Director of the American Educational Research Association. Previously she was Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association. She also served as Director of the Law and Social Science Program at the National Science Foundation and as Senior Research Social Scientist at the American Bar Foundation. She holds A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. degrees in sociology and psychology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Levine’s work focuses on research and science policy issues, including research ethics, data access and sharing, peer review, scientific and academic professions, and higher education. She served on the National Human Research Protections Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and on the 2000 Decennial Census Advisory Committee. She also served on the National Research Council panel that produced the report Putting People on the Map: Protecting Confidentiality with Linked Social-Spatial Data. Dr. Levine chairs a National Research Council Planning Committee for a Workshop on Protecting Student's Records and Facilitating Education Research and is vice-chair of a project undertaken at the request of the National Center for Education Statistics to examine the state of postsecondary data systems. Levine serves on the Executive Committee of the Consortium of Social Science Associations and on the Board of Directors of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Psychological Science.


Carl Lineberger
University of Colorado
Carl Lineberger was born in Hamlet, North Carolina. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1965, working with John Hooper and Earl McDaniel in atomic collision physics. In 1968, he began postdoctoral work with Lewis M. Branscomb at JILA in Boulder. Subsequently, he joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, and is now the E.U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Fellow of JILA. His work is primarily experimental, using a wide variety of laser based techniques to study structure and reactivity of gas phase ions. These studies have provided many precise thermochemical properties of important ions, radicals and diradicals. Recent studies have been directed toward elucidating the structure of transient reaction intermediates, to developing understanding of the gradual evolution of physical properties from an isolated molecule to a solvated species and to real-time investigations of reaction dynamics including the cage effect in size-selected clusters. Specifically, he has employed ultrafast laser technology to elucidate the role of the solvent in the molecular cage effect in such clusters. He has published over 240 papers in major scientific journals, and his graduate students and postdoctoral associates hold major research-related positions throughout the world.
Carl has been awarded the H. P. Broida Prize in Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy and the Earle K. Plyler Prize by the American Physical Society, the Meggers Prize by the Optical Society of America and the Michelson Prize by the Coblentz Society. He has received the Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics and the Peter Debye Prize in Physical Chemistry from the American Chemical Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1983), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995), a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as a member of Sigma Xi and the American Chemical Society.

Carl is involved in a number of science advisory activities. He has recently served on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the Governing Board of the National Research Council, and Chair of the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. He is currently a member of the National Research Council Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy, the NRC Report Review Committee, the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of science, and is involved with several NSF-related advisory activities.


Michael D. Mumford
Department of Psychology, The University of Oklahoma
Dr. Michael D. Mumford is the George Lynn Cross Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at the University of Oklahoma where he directs the Center for Applied Social Research. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Georgia in 1983 in the fields of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Psychometrics. Dr. Mumford is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (Divisions 3, 5, 14), the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and the American Psychological Society. He has written more than 250 articles on creativity, innovation, leadership planning, and ethics. He serves as Senior Editor of The Leadership Quarterly and is on the editorial boards of the Creativity Research Journal, The Journal of Creative Behavior, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, The International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving, and The Journal of Business Ethics. Dr. Mumford has served as principal investigator on grants totaling more than 25 million from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Department of Labor, and the Department of State. His research on scientific ethics has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Council of Graduate Schools. He is a recipient of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s M. Scott Myers Award for applied research in the work place.


Simil Raghavan
Johns Hopkins University
Simil Raghavan is currently a graduate student finishing her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Her thesis is focused on neural and vocal plasticity as a result of deafness in primates. She is interested in how the brain learns and processes language and along with a B.S.E in mechanical engineering she also received a B.A. in Spanish language from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK. Simil grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and is very interested in improving science and mathematics education especially for underrepresented groups. She worked for three years in an elementary school before attending college and also studied social work for two and a half years before changing her focus to engineering. In addition to her work as a graduate student she completed a ten-week internship with the National Academy of Engineering last year where she worked on improving a website designed to provide young girls with information about a career in engineering. Since then she has continued to provide support for the website and plans to continue working with the Academies after finishing her thesis in September.


Brian Schrag
Association for Practical and Professional Ethics
Dr. Schrag is the founding Executive Secretary of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. The Association was founded in 1991 to promote high quality teaching and scholarship across all disciplines and professions. As such, they have done a great deal of programming in science and engineering research ethics and ethics education as well as professional ethics and professional ethics education. Two years ago the Responsible Conduct of Research Educational Consortium merged with the Association.

Brian Schrag was the PI for an NSF funded project, Graduate Research Ethics Education which ran from 1996-2006 (SES-9817880 and SBR 9241897). In that project they brought together 7 interdisciplinary cohorts of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the natural, physical and social sciences and engineering, totaling 117 participants. One outcome of the project was seven volumes of cases and commentaries in research ethics, which have proved extremely popular. They have distributed nearly 2000 volumes to more than 160 universities in the U.S. as well as 26 universities in a dozen foreign countries. Cases are posted online at the CEES Online Ethics Center and many University web sites from Columbia and Cornell to Melbourne and South Africa and some even translated into Hebrew. Brain Schrag hosted an NSF funded workshop on Web-based Education in Science and Engineering Ethics, which resulted in a special issue of Science and Engineering Ethics.

Brain Schrag holds a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Philosophy (undergraduate double major in philosophy and science). He is a Senior Scholar at Indiana University, and Faculty Associate at the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, where the Association is headquartered.


Susan S. Silbey
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor Susan S. Silbey is Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and Head of the Department of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and post-graduate training in ethnography in the Sociology Department of Brandeis University. She has published over four dozen articles in scholarly journals and collections, and in 1998 published The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life (with Patricia Ewick) describing the ways in which Americans imagine, use, and construct the rule of law. In 2003, she published (with Herbert Kritzer) In Litigation: Do the 'Haves' Still Come Out Ahead. From 1991-1997, she co-edited Studies in Law, Politics and Society, and from 1997-2000 was the editor of the Law & Society Review. In 2008, she published a two volume collection on the relationships between the two most powerful institutions of modern society, Law and Science (I): Epistemological, Evidentiary, and Relational Engagements, and Law and Science (II): Regulation of Property, Practices, and Products.

In March 2008, Silbey was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship to work a new book, Governing Green Laboratories: Trust and Surveillance in the Cultures of Science describing the introduction of environmental, health and safety management systems into research laboratories. This is an effort to explore a confrontation between the authority of law and the authority of science, and to do so in the very heart of science: in the laboratory. Professor Silbey also supervises research on gender hierarchies in science, variations in engineering education, and legal consciousness, legality and forms of innovative regulatory enforcement. She teaches courses on research methods for graduate students in the social sciences; fieldwork and qualitative research methods; power; law and society, and law and science. Professor Silbey is Past President of the Law & Society Association, and a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. In November 2006, she was awarded Doctoris Honora Causa by Ecole Normale Superieure Cachan for her contributions to the sociology of law.


Caroline Whitbeck
Case Western Reserve University
Caroline Whitbeck is a philosopher of science, technology, and medicine. She retired last year from Case Western Reserve University where she is the Emerita Elmer G. Beamer-Hubert H. Schneider Professor in Ethics and holds an appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Professor Whitbeck combines research and teaching interests in the philosophy of science, technology, and medicine; practical ethics; and feminist philosophy, with interest in education of a diverse student body for careers in engineering and the science-based professions. Her work in the philosophy of science extends from the philosophy of physics through the philosophy of medicine and medical research to engineering practice and research. That work focuses on the place of practice in the development of scientific, medical, and engineering concepts and emphasizes the synthetic as well as analytic elements in responses to moral problems. In the 1980s and 1990s, she developed the analogy between ethical problems and design problems, in particular, problems of engineering design and research design. She pioneered active learning methods in the teaching of engineering ethics and the responsible conduct of research, especially methods that place the learner in the position of the agent who must actually respond to the problem (rather than in the position of a judge who merely evaluates responses that have already been constructed). Her emphasis on agent-centered problem-solving has been widely influential.
In 1995 she edited a special issue of Science and Engineering Ethics on Trustworthy Research. She was the editor for a special issue of the International Journal of Engineering Education on engineering ethics, which appeared in August 2001, with duplicate publication in the Online Ethics Center, which she directs. Her articles "Trust and the Future of Research" was published in Physics Today, in November 2004, and republished in translation Physics Today's Japanese language publication, Parity in the June, 2005 issue. Her book, Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research, was published by Cambridge University Press in spring 1998 and the Japanese translation of the first half of that book, translated by Hiroshi Iino and Jun Fudano, was published by Misuzu Shobo in December 2000. The second edition is to appear in 2009.


Joseph A. Whittaker, Ph.D.
Morgan State University
Dr. Joseph A. Whittaker is Dean of the School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences and Professor of Biology at Morgan State University. Dr. Whittaker has been a devoted teacher, leader and researcher for more than 18 years and has been recognized for his many contributions to undergraduate, graduate and medical education as well as to research, faculty and institutional development in several academic institutions. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1982 from Morgan State University and subsequently the doctoral degree in Physiology and Biophysics in 1988 from Howard University. After his postdoctoral training in Cellular Electrophysiology at University of Tennessee, Memphis, Dr. Whittaker joined the faculty of Howard University, and subsequently Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) in Atlanta, GA, where he served 14 years in teaching and active research in the Departments of Anatomy & Neurobiology as well as Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. At Morehouse, he spearheaded establishment of the MSM Developmental Neuroscience Program, which drove the design and construction of the current Neuroscience Institute, the first of its kind in a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). In addition to his numerous academic and leadership positions, Dr. Whittaker has served as faculty member in the University Pittsburgh Survival Skills and Ethics Workshop, a member of several scientific review panels and committees at the National Science Foundation, Center for Disease Control, National Academy of Sciences & National Institutes of Health, in addition to Advisory Committees at several institutions across the US. Dr. Whittaker has also been a member of the selection committee for the California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB) Integrated Technology Transfer Network (ITTN) Entrepreneurship Training Program as well as the Advisory Board of the SOMAS Program at Davidson College, the Board of Directors for the Central Maryland March of Dimes; the East Baltimore Incubator Corporation (EBIC); and NIH/NCRR Scientific and Technical Review Board (STRB).


Wendy Reed Williams
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Wendy Reed Williams, PhD, is the Director of Research Education at the Joseph Stokes Jr. Research Institute at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Under her direction, the Department of Research Education works with faculty, trainees and administrators to determine the educational and training needs of the Hospital’s research community. The group also develops services and programs for postdocs and other research trainees. Dr. Williams earned a BS in Zoology from Howard University and a PhD in Biology from the Johns Hopkins University where she studied gene regulation in E. coli. After completing brief postdoctoral fellowships at the United States Department of Agriculture and at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Dr. Williams began her transition from the lab bench by becoming the first administrative fellow at the Stokes Institute. It was during this fellowship that Dr. Williams was able to explore career opportunities in research administration. Her interest in postdocs, research ethics and training led her to take a position as a training specialist in Research Education before taking on the role of Director. Dr. Williams serves on the University of Pennsylvania Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs Advisory Board, the Bring RCR Home Advisory Committee, and the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science Abstract Review and Selection Committee. Dr. Williams was recently elected to the board of directors of the National Postdoctoral Association. In this role, she continues her commitment to enhancing the postdoctoral experience and preparing postdocs for long-term career success.


Sara Wilson
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Kansas
Sara Wilson’s engineering research spans a wide area of occupational ergonomics, orthopedic biomechanics, and medical devices. In particular, she has been examining the effects of whole body vibration on neuromotor control of low back motion in order to understand how occupational vibration exposure increase low back injury risk and to develop prevention methods. In her lab, they have found that with occupational exposure to vibration for as little as 20 minutes, subjects demonstrate a decreased ability to sense posture and an increase in reaction time. Such losses on lumbar control can lead to losses in stability of the spine and potentially to injury. They are now taking this research to the field to examine these effects in construction workers and to develop an interventional seatpad that will prevent these effects. In addition to this research, she works with a medical device company on the validation of movement monitoring devices. Sara Wilson has also done research on age-related vertebral fractures, scoliosis and ankle stability.
Sara Wilson’s involvement in issues of engineering ethics began as a participant in the Graduate Research Ethics Education workshops hosted by Indiana University and the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. As part of this she wrote an ethics case on issues in the use of computational modeling for forensic consulting. From this case, she has developed an interest in the issues of engineering ethics in the use of computational/mathematical models. Sara Wilson has presented some of these thoughts at the APPE conference and is currently working with Michael Loui and others on a project to further this work. Sara also currently teaches a required course for Bioengineering graduate students on research and engineering ethics each fall.