About the topic: Products developed using recombinant DNA methods account for over $300 billion in annual U.S. domestic revenues, underlying a so-called “bioeconomy” that has grown 10-15% annually since the invention of genetic engineering ~40 years ago. Yet most of biotechnology has not been imagined let alone made true.  I will review the last decade of work to make biology easier to engineer, from basic science to applied tools.  Particular attention will be given to two underlying trends that are having policy impacts beyond research labs: (i) interconversion of physical genetic material and digital sequence information via advancing DNA sequence and synthesis tools, (ii) coordination of labor across time and place via technical standards supporting composition, measurement, and data exchange.

About the speaker: Drew works on “synthetic biology.”  His group invented genome refactoring to both study and extend the utility of bacteriophage.  His team also realized non-volatile chromosomal digital data storage, amplifying genetic logic gates, and cell-cell communication via engineered DNA messaging.  He led the BIOFAB team that engineered a professional collection of reliably reusable standard biological parts and started the BioBricks Foundation (BBF) as a charity supporting development of a free-to-use language for programming life to benefit all people and the planet.  In 2013 Drew was recognized by the White House for the BBF’s contributions to “open science” and received the Seymour Benzer lectureship from the US NAS. 

ABOUT THE TOPIC: Why was nuclear war deemed unwinnable in the United States? Pace conventional wisdom, the truth was not self-evident. The determination that nuclear weapons were useful in a negative sense (deterring conflict), but not a positive sense (pursuing victory), became axiomatic in the Kennedy Years. Standard accounts explaining how a nuclear taboo arose highlight policymakers’ and thought leaders’ moral revulsion toward great loss of human life. This paper looks at studies of post-attack environments to argue that economic and ecological considerations were of equal if not decisive importance. The core question was how to protect and conserve the natural foundations of an advanced industrial state according to the tenets of modernization theory. Economists and ecologists thus clashed because of incompatible methods and political competition. Their collective inability to deliver concrete recommendations for overcoming an all-out thermonuclear attack reinforced a gathering international norm that the possession and use of nuclear weapons merited legal circumscriptions and prohibitions. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Jonathan Hunt is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC for 2013-2014. He was a predoctoral fellow at CISAC for 2012-2013, and received his PhD in history from the University of Texas at Austin in December 2013. His dissertation, “Into the Bargain: The Triumph and Tragedy of Nuclear Internationalism during the mid-Cold War, 1958-1970,” examined how decolonization, the meanings of nuclear power, discord in Cold War alliances, and a schism in internationalist thought shaped how a burgeoning international community brought order to the Nuclear Age. Jonathan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Plan II Honors Liberal Arts; History; and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. In 2011, he was a residential fellow at the George F. Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and, in 2012, at the Security and Sustainability Program of the International Green Cross in Washington, DC. He was also a Dwight D. Eisenhower/Clifford Roberts Graduate Fellow for 2012-2013. He has published in Passport, Not Even Past, The Huffington Post, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Barton J. Bernstein is Professor Emeritus of History at Stanford University. He was Professor of History at Stanford from 1965-2012. Additionally, he was previously Co-Chair of the International Relations Program and the International Policy Studies Program. Professor Bernstein received his PhD in History from Harvard University and his BA from Queens College. He has taught extensively at Stanford; in the past, his courses have included: The United States Since 1945; The Politics and Ethics of Modern Science and Technology; and Decision Making in International Crisis: The A-Bomb, the Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Professor Bernstein has published extensively in numerous academic journals, and his books include: The Truman Administration: A Documentary History; Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History; Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration; and Twentieth-Century America: Recent Interpretations.