ABOUT The SNU in the World Program Director
Doogab Yi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Science Studies at Seoul National University and Director of The SNU in the World Program with SJRC at UCSC on Innovation, Science and Justice (Winter 2023, 2024, 2025). His broad research interests lay in the intersection between science and capitalism in the 20th and 21th centuries, and he is currently working on several projects related to the development of science and technology within the context of capitalism, such as the history of biotechnology, the relationship between science and the law, and the emergence of the technologies of the 24/7 self. He teaches courses in the history of modern science, science and the law, and environmental history. Learn more at: https://doogab.wixsite.com/doogabyi
ABOUT UCSC PARTICIPANTS (in alphabetical order)
CHESSA ADSIT-MORRIS is a Graduate Student in Visual Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Chessa is a curriculum theorist, assistant director of the Center for Creative Ecologies housed within the department of the History of Art and Visual Culture at UC Santa Cruz, and the Graduate Student Researcher for the Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC). She writes widely on the intersection of curriculum studies, posthumanism(s), ecological thought and SF, and is the author of “Restorying Environmental Education: Figurations, Fictions, Feral Subjectivities” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) (open access copy). Her current teaching, research and publications focus on transdisciplinary research and pedagogy, with particular reference to visual studies, socially engaged art, science and technology studies, environmental humanities, ecological thought and speculative fiction. Chessa works with SJRC specifically on the Leadership in the Ethical and Equitable Design (LEED) of STEM Research initiative.
CHRIS BENNER is a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies and the Dorothy E. Everett Chair in Global Information and Social Entrepreneurship at UC Santa Cruz. He currently directs the Everett Program for Technology and Social Change and the Institute for Social Transformation. His research examines the relationships between technological change, regional development, and the structure of economic opportunity, focusing on regional labor markets and the transformation of work and employment. He has authored or co-authored seven books (most recently Solidarity Economics, 2021, Polity Press) and more that 75 journal articles, chapters and research reports. He received his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.
BEN BREENE is an associate professor of history at the UC Santa Cruz specializing in the history of science, medicine, globalization, and the impacts of technological change.
MANEL CAMPS is Crown College Provost and Professor of Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology. Provost Camps has a deep commitment to undergraduate and graduate education. His goal as the academic director of Crown is to promote an inclusive environment that fosters the personal and academic growth of students with a wide diversity of interests and identities. A critical element in Provost Camps’ vision is the promotion of cross-disciplinary, skills-based, project-oriented instruction through elective classes in entrepreneurship, communication, and scientific modeling. A second element in Provost Camps’ vision is connecting students with the real world through experiential learning opportunities, both as a way of “learning by doing” and as a way to facilitate our student’s transition into professional careers. This involves partnerships with UCSC’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development (CIED), the KZSC radio station, and our Division of Global Engagement (offering Crown-sponsored summer classes abroad, through Global Seminars).
KEVIN CORCORAN is an Environmental Art + Social Practice MFA Candidate at UC Santa Cruz who works with an open interest in sound as medium as it moves through contexts of music, art, communication and place and takes form as performance, publication, installation, and image. His background in percussion and improvisation opens up to field recording practices and place-based making with focus on abandoned and overlooked areas, conditions of excess, processes of decay and intersections of infrastructure and open space.
JAMES DOUCET-BATTLE is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Science & Justice Research Center at UC Santa Cruz. James is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley/University San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, technology and society studies, development studies and anthropological approaches to health and medicine. James applies these interests to study the political economy of genomic discourses about race, risk, and health disparities.
CAROLINA FLORES is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz who works at the intersection of philosophy of mind, epistemology, and social philosophy.
CAMILLA FORSBERG is a Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. The Forsberg lab focuses on stem cell fate decisions of the blood system. Hematopoietic stem cells are responsible for generating a life-long supply of mature blood cells. Each stem cell is capable of making all of the mature blood cell types with widely different functions: some blood cells specialize in carrying oxygen, others fight off infections, and still others prevent bleeding in the process of blood clotting. How does a stem cell decide which cell type to give rise to? Are these decisions made by the stem cell itself, by its descendant multipotent progenitors, or both? How are these decisions dysregulated to cause cancer and other disorders? We tackle these questions from multiple angles – by in vivo and in vitro experimental approaches, by focusing on specific molecules as well as analyzing global changes. Ultimately, we want to understand the molecular determinants of hematopoietic stem cell fate decisions so that we can prevent and treat both genetic and acquired disorders of the hematopoietic system, including anemia, autoimmune disease, leukemias and lymphomas.
ANNA FRIZ is an Associate Professor of Film & Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. Anna creates media art, sound and transmission art, working across platforms to present installations, broadcasts, films and performances. Her works reflect upon media ecologies, land use, infrastructures, time perception, and critical fictions.
LEILANI GILPIN is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC Santa Cruz and is part of the AI group @ UCSC and leads the AI Explainability and Accountability (AIEA) Lab.
LINDSAY HINCK is a Professor of Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology at UC Santa Cruz. The Hinck lab is interested in understanding how epithelial cells assemble into organs during development, and how the reverse process occurs during cancer when cells disassemble and metastasize to inappropriate locations. Recently, we have been focusing our studies on a family of positional cues, called Slits, which were originally identified in the nervous system where they direct the construction of elaborate networks of neuronal connections. Currently, the laboratory has projects in three areas: building an organ; stem cells and self-renewal; and loss of growth control and cancer.
JENNIFER HORNE is an Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media whose area of expertise is nontheatrical film and media, with an emphasis on the history of the factual, educational, film in governmental and institutional streams of activity. Her research interests span media citizenship, the history of institutional uses of film/video, media archaeologies, film exhibition histories, areas of film preservation and archiving that shape our understanding of film culture, and all aspects of these areas which touch gender and feminist history.
WON JEON is a graduate student in the History of Consciousness department at UC Santa Cruz. She works at the intersections of history of science and philosophy of technology, particularly on cybernetics and the history of technology, labor, and value theory.
JAMES KARABIN is a graduate student in the Sociology department at UC Santa Cruz and a researcher with the Science & Justice LEED Initiative.
IRENE LUSZTIG is a feminist filmmaker, archival researcher, educator, and amateur seamstress. She works in a space of delicate mediation between people, their pasts, and the present-tense spaces and landscapes where unresolved histories bloom and erupt. Often beginning with rigorous research in archives, her work brings historical materials into conversation with the present, inviting viewers to contemplate questions of politics, ideology, and the complex ways that personal, collective, and national memory are entangled. Her work has been screened around the world, including at the Berlinale, MoMA, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, Flaherty NYC, IDFA Amsterdam, Hot Docs, AFI Docs, BFI London Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, DocLisboa, and RIDM Montréal. She has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim (2021), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright, two MacDowell fellowships, the Flaherty Film Seminar, and the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship.
KAREN MIGA is an Assistant Professor in the Biomolecular Engineering Department at UC Santa Cruz and Associate Director at the UCSC Genomics Institute. Karen is the co-lead of the telomere-to-telomere (T2T) consortium and the project director of the human pangenome reference consortium (HPRC) production center at UCSC. Karen’s research program combines innovative computational and experimental approaches to produce the high-resolution sequence maps of human centromeric and pericentromeric DNAs. The Miga lab aims to uncover a new source of genetic and epigenetic variation in the human population, which is useful to investigate novel associations between genotype and phenotype of inherited traits and disease. More information can be found at: https://migalab.com/
DIMITRIS PAPADOPOULOS is a Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a science and technology studies scholar working at the intersections of technoscience studies, socio-cultural theory, constructivist photography, and political ecology.
MARIA PUIG DE LA BELLACASA is a Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz who works at the crossing of science and technology studies, feminist theory and the environmental humanities.
JENNY REARDON is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). She has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Humboldt Foundation, the London School of Economics, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and the United States Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.
COLLEEN STONE manages all public relations and administrative aspects of the Science & Justice Research Center, its projects and grants, curriculum, training and visitor programs. Additionally, Colleen is the department assistant for Sociology, supporting faculty and student driven research.
CONNIE ZHENG is a graduate student in Film and Digital Arts, a Chinese-born artist, writer and experimental filmmaker based out of xučyun (also known as Oakland, California). She works with maps, seeds, food, environmental histories, speculative fiction, field recordings and hand-drawn animation. Her projects frequently include participatory scenarios and seek to diagram dynamic relationships between human and more-than-human worlds, as well as the interplay between memory, culture, and place. Projects such as maps of toxic sites and environmental remediation, speculative seed exchanges, seed-making kits, mooncake design workshops and improvisational pseudo-documentaries are strategies for navigating diasporic memory, the continued weight of history, and possibilities for collective imagining amidst ongoing and future ecological transformations.
ABOUT UCSC Programs and Research Initiatives (in alphabetical order)
The Center for Documentary Arts and Research (CDAR) supports interdisciplinary explorations of the documentary and non-fiction arts, broadly conceived: it serves as a locus for experimentation and investigation of the social, aesthetic, historical, political and pedagogical capacities of documentary and nonfiction film and media forms and practices. CDAR is directed by Jennifer Horne.
The Division of Global Engagement (video) inspires and facilitates global learning, teaching, and research at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The division includes the functional units of International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS), Global Learning, Global Programming, and Global Initiatives with student Global Leaders.
The Everett Program for Technology and Social Change (video) develops young leaders who use the technical, educational, and research resources of the university to work directly with communities, empowering people to develop practical solutions to persistent problems. Everett’s educational philosophy is rooted in a holistic approach that engages students in linking theory, practice and personal development. Students are supported in making these connections through hands-on work contributing to social justice and environmental sustainability with community partners. Students work towards obtaining a major concentration or minor in Global Information and Social Enterprise Studies (GISES) administered through the Department of Sociology. Meet the Fellows.
The IAS, The Institute of the Arts and Sciences, located in the city of Santa Cruz, is the Central Coast’s premier university art and research center. Through groundbreaking, national-caliber art exhibitions and social justice initiatives, the IAS creatively educates students and the public about urgent issues impacting our society with innovative approaches to art and equity. The IAS features state-of-the-art galleries, a screening room featuring curated programs of short, experimental films, and an event space for performances and lectures. The galleries are a vital hub for UC Santa Cruz and the region, bringing national and internationally acclaimed artists and projects to enliven the culture of our communities.
SJRC’s LEED Initiative—a national and international collaboration—aims to clarify, review, and revitalize the roles and value of engaging bioethicists and scholars in the social sciences, humanities, and the arts in STEM research. More information can be found at: https://leed.ucsc.edu/
The Stem Cell Journal Club is hosted by The Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells (IBSC) at UC Santa Cruz which aims to support and advance stem cell research by promoting interdisciplinary discoveries in biology, engineering, and information science. More information is here about the Stem cell agency (CIRM) that funds research training programs at UC Santa Cruz with IBSC and SJRC.
The UCSC SUSTAINABILITY OFFICE strives to foster a culture of diverse, equitable and inclusive sustainability at UC Santa Cruz. They actively engage students, staff, faculty and community members through education, leadership development, institutional change and behavioral transformation. They build partnerships with students and community members to improve UCSC’s environmental performance, seeking to model the way for how large institutions can work collaboratively to solve some of the world’s biggest environmental and social justice challenges. Students also work to advance inclusive sustainability and are leading our efforts at advancing education around the intersectionality between social and environmental justice. Read more about the effort toward the full decarbonization and electrification of the campus in this campus news article.
ABOUT NonUCSC PARTICIPANTS (in alphabetical order)
DENNIS BROWE is a graduate of the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz and works with SJRC on the Third St Just Biomedicine Project. Dennis’ work lies at the intersections of medical sociology, science & technology studies (STS), public health, sexuality and gender studies, and feminist theory.
MILDRED CHO is a Research Professor of Pediatrics at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University.
JULIE HARRIS-WAI is Associate Professor, Institute for Health & Aging in the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Harris-Wai’s research focuses on examining the social and ethical factors influencing how and why genomic technologies are translated from the research setting into clinical care and the impact these technologies have on health disparities and underserved communities. The goal of her work is to identify methods for incorporating community and stakeholder perspectives into policy decision-making to improve the appropriate translation of research into clinical and public health programs. Dr. Harris-Wai is the Associate Director of the Kaiser Permanente/UCSF Center for Excellence in Research on Translational Genomics and Ethics (CT2G). She is currently working on an R21 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to use deliberative community engagement methods to inform policy decisions about the future of California’s Newborn Screening Program.
ROYA PAKZAD is the Founder and Director of Taraaz, a non-profit organization working at the intersection of technology and human rights. She is also the 2023-24 Practitioner Data and Democracy Fellow at the Karsh Institute of Democracy and the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia and an affiliated scholar at UC Berkeley’s CITRIS Policy Lab. Her work centers on researching human rights implications of digital technologies, corporate accountability, and human rights-centered design.
Dr. Paul Tang is Adjunct Professor at the Clinical Excellence Research Center at Stanford University and a practicing internist at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Most recently, he was Vice President, Chief Health Transformation.
TIFFANY WISE-WEST is the Sustainability and Climate Action Manager for The City of Santa Cruz and a founding graduate fellow of the Science & Justice Training Program at UC Santa Cruz. Tiffany is a licensed professional civil engineer with nearly 20 years of experience in municipal infrastructure planning, design and project management. Tiffany received her BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Purdue University and specialized in water, wastewater and solid waste systems for the first half of her career. In the second half of her career, after a stint teaching mathematics and environmental education to secondary students, Tiffany earned her MA and PhD in Environmental Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz where she focused her academic research on the techno-economic and policy elements of sustainability, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and issues at the water and energy nexus. Tiffany specializes in negotiating and managing public-private-academic partnership projects aimed at advancing green infrastructure, policy and programming. She leads the award-winning Santa Cruz GreenWharf initiative and currently works on state and regional climate and energy issues in her roles as Senior Environmental Engineer at EcoShift Consulting, the City of Santa Cruz’s Climate Action Outreach Coordinator, and the District 2 Commissioner on the Santa Cruz County Commission on the Environment.