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)
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.
SARAH BIRD is an artist-researcher and Ph.D. candidate in Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz, focusing on ethical arboreal-human relationality. A Fellow of the UCSC Climate Action Lab and 2024 Visiting Artist-Scholar at Justus Liebig University, Giessen, her recent public art includes Being/Tree (San Francisco Ferry Building) and Trees in Place/Attunement (Wellfleet, MA). Current exhibitions include Trees/Place (Giessen, Germany) and Earth-Sun Attunement (AADK/Centro Negra, Spain). Bird’s work was featured at the 2017 Venice Biennale and is the subject of the feature documentary Giants Rising (2024). www.sarahbirdstudio.com
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.
TIM GALARNEAU serves as a co-director of Education and Training with the newly renamed Center for Economic Justice and Action (CEJA) at UC Santa Cruz, formerly known as the Blum Center on Poverty, Social Enterprise, and Participatory Governance. Tim’s work advances systemwide basic needs efforts across campuses, intersegmental engagement, and nationally. Tim also works with students, producers, chefs, and supply chains across California and beyond to advance regional, seasonal, and small to mid scale under invested producer and enterprise relationships across the food system. At the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology he oversees a team of staff and students working from the field to the plate in re-envisioning access to delicious and nourishing food for all. In addition, he is a co-founder of Real Food Challenge and a board advisor to the national movement non-profit amidst other community engaged advisory efforts.
GONZALO GALETTO is an Argentine-American artist and filmmaker currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research investigates contemporary artistic methodologies that are responsive to the current climatic conditions and which propose modes of making that are situated in place. His artistic practice explores the application of methods that engage the elements and the environment in relation to place to re-imagine modes of being with more-than-human subjects. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design working on media installations with spatialized sound and multi-channel video installations. As a Fellow of the Climate Action Lab he is researching how the expanding field of environmental artistic practices is engaging with more-than-human and elemental discourses and how contemporary artistic practices can ask ethical questions in response to climate change from a situated perspective and in relation to land.
Gonzalo will be presenting Niebla Nocturna, a site-specific environmental art project that takes form in experimental video performances. Niebla Nocturna is part of a larger research project focusing on place-based artistic practices that are focused on the changing climatic conditions and that seek to propose new modes of engagement with the atmosphere through direct encounters with a particular element, fog.
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.
JAMES KARABIN is a graduate student in the Sociology department at UC Santa Cruz and a researcher with the Science & Justice LEED Initiative.
SRI KURNIAWAN is a Professor of Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz, the Baskin Engineering Associate Dean for Research, and directs a lab called ASSIST, which stands for Assistive Sociotechnical Solutions for Individuals with Special needs using Technology.
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.
DOROTHY R. SANTOS is a Filipino American writer, artist, and media scholar. She earned her Ph.D. in Film and Digital Media with a designated emphasis in Computational Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Art Department and Principal Faculty for the Creative Technologies program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
KRITI SHARMA is a microbial ecologist and philosopher whose work bridges biology, philosophy, and art to re-tell “the story of life” not as struggle and scarcity, but as radical interdependence. She is Assistant Professor of Critical Race Science and Technology Studies in CRES, and the author of Interdependence: Biology and Beyond (Fordham University Press, 2015) and the forthcoming Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human with co-authors Michal Osterweil and Arturo Escobar. Dr. Sharma completed her PhD in Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her postdoctoral research in geobiology at Caltech. Her field- and laboratory-based research on microbes in deep sea sediments in seagrass meadows elucidates how these carbon-sequestering organisms can mitigate climate change, and offer teachings on making brave transitions into the unknown. Kriti will work closely with the Science & Justice Research Center to help develop the new Science & Justice undergraduate minor. Her transdisciplinary laboratory in the Earth and Marine Sciences Building brings together multispecies collectives around the question of how to transition beyond the dominant bio-economic vision of life and the human.
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, and helps coordinate The Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies (CUES) and its Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Research for Resilience project.
MERVE ÜNSAL is an artist based in Istanbul and Santa Cruz. In her research, she considers the sinkhole as a listening and viewing technology. She thinks through site-specific assemblages and writes about sinkhole time. Her work is currently on view as part of Countering Time at Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong. She recently had a solo exhibition, Intimations, at AVTO (Istanbul, January 2024). She is the founding editor of m-est.org, a publication focused on artist-centered publishing. She is a PhD candidate at the Film and Digital Media Studies Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. merveunsal.com; m-est.org.
Ünsal will be presenting Sinkhole as glitch. The sinkhole becomes a mediator, an amplifying and viewing technology that presents conceptual tools with which difficult pasts and presents can help imagine new ways of ideating the future. Situating sinkholes as a glitch allows for a methodological intervention by claiming disruption as an ongoing state. The expansive temporality allows for a perception of place and people that embrace catastrophe as a modality as catastrophes of the seeming past and the slippery present fold onto each other at the sinkhole.
ABOUT UCSC Programs and Research Initiatives (in alphabetical order)
The UCSC BRAINGENEERS are a team of researchers that is experimenting with cerebral organoids — structures grown in the lab that replicate steps of brain development in growing embryos. They are applying modern artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to:
- Uncover how genetic changes enhanced human brain architecture and computing capacity during primate evolution
- Enable an unprecedented window into brain development
- Develop the first scalable system to study the behavior of human neural circuits using stimulus-response-reinforcement experiments.
The Center for Agroecology is rooted in the Division of Social Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. It is an organization of staff, faculty, and students who work to advance agroecology and equitable food systems through experiential education, participatory research, agricultural extension, and public service.
The Center for Economic Justice and Action (CEJA) at UC Santa Cruz, is committed to community-engaged research and programming that alleviates poverty, reduces economic inequality, and advances the essential needs of all people. The UC system defines “basic needs” as an ecosystem that ensures equitable access to essentials such as nutritious food, secure housing, healthcare, affordable transportation, personal hygiene resources, and emergency support for students with dependents. The terms “basic needs” and “essential needs” are often used interchangeably, however, we encourage using the term “essential needs” to emphasize their foundational importance to well-being, thriving, and student success.
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 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)
SARA ACKERMAN is Associate Professor, School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco.
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.
GALEN JOSEPH is a Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is also a member of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Affiliate Faculty with the Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. Her research examines the socio-cultural and institutional dimensions of inequities in cancer care and translational genomics. As an anthropologist, she specializes in ethnographic approaches, and use a range of mixed qualitative and quantitative methods and community engaged research approaches. Her research program has primarily focused on: (1) Genetic Counseling Communication across Language, Literacy, and Culture; (2) Ethical, Legal, Social Issues (ELSI) Research in Clinical Adoption of Genomic Discoveries; and (3) Recruitment of Medically Underserved Populations into Cancer Clinical Trials. A new area of research examines the impact of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision on prenatal genetic counseling and training of genetic counselors in the post-Roe era. This research includes foci on the experience of genetic counselors facing moral distress due to abortion bans and restrictions; changing medical documentation practices to protect patients and providers; and the evolving training of prenatal genetic counseling students in states restricting abortion.
CHRISTOPHER KIRCHHOFF is an expert in emerging technology who founded the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley office and has led teams for President Obama, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CEO of Google. He is the author of Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War. Most recently Dr. Kirchhoff worked special projects at Anthropic. Earlier, he helped grow the philanthropy of Google CEO Eric Schmidt from 10 to 100 people and $1 billion in programs. Previously he led the 67-person Defense Innovation Unit X, which piloted flying cars and microsatellites in military missions and created a new acquisition pathway for start-ups now responsible for $70 billion dollars of technology acquisition by the Department of Defense.
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.
The Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics Established in 1989, the Stanford Center for Biomedical (SCBE) is an interdisciplinary hub for faculty who do research, teaching, and service on topics in bioethics and medical humanities. SCBE and its faculty have been widely recognized for leadership on a range of issues. SCBE was among the first in the field to be designated by NIH as a Center for Excellence in Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI) in Genetics and Genomics. It was the first to receive a T32 training grant in the field. And SCBE is now the Coordinating Center for ELSI research at the National Human Genome Research Institute. SCBE researchers have pioneered new approaches to studying the ethical issues presented by new technologies in biomedicine, including Artificial Intelligence, CRISPR and Gene Therapy, Stem Cell Research, Synthetic Biology, and the Human Brain Initiative.