The Human Game has assembled a team with advisors from private, government, business, academic and other organizations to collaboratively raise awareness of gene editing.
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ADVISORS
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Kenneth Oye
Professor of Political Science and Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS); Director, Program on Emerging Technologies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Kenneth Oye is Professor of Political Science and Data, Systems and Society and Director of the Program on Emerging Technologies at MIT. His research on technology policy and international relations currently focuses on adaptive regulation of rapidly changing technologies, with emphasis on synthetic biology and pharmaceuticals.
His books in international relations includes Cooperation under Anarchy, Economic Discrimination and Political Exchange and four edited volumes on American foreign policy, Eagle Entangled, Eagle Defiant, Eagle Resurgent and Eagle in a New World. Professor Oye holds appointments in the MIT Synthetic Biology Center and Center for Biomedical Innovation, chairs the Broad Institute Foundry and iGEM Safety Committees, and serves on the advisory committee of the International Risk Governance Center (Lausanne). He has served as an invited expert for the UNBWC, WHO, NSABB, OSTP-PCAST, NAS, Defense Intelligence Board and EMA. Before joining the MIT faculty, he taught at Harvard University, the University of California, Princeton University and Swarthmore College as was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science with Highest Honors from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D in Political Science with the Chase Dissertation Prize from Harvard University.
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Andrew Hessel
CEO of Humane Genomics Inc., a seed-stage company developing virus-based therapies for cancer, starting with dogs.
Andrew Hessel is a futurist and catalyst in biological technologies, helping industry, academics, and authorities better understand the changes ahead in life science. He is a Distinguished Researcher with Autodesk Inc. Bio/Nano Programmable Matter group, based out of San Francisco.
Trained in microbiology and genetics, Andrew has continually worked at the forefront of genomics, first to read and comprehend bacterial, human, and other genomes and more recently to write them. He believes the technology that makes this possible, called synthetic biology, is revolutionary and that it will eventually surpass information technology (IT) as an economic engine and driver of societal change.
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John Booth
Executive Producer, Arizona Public Media
John Booth has an extraordinarily diverse thirty+ year career in high quality content production and personnel/finance management. In his seventeen years with Oregon Public Broadcasting, he shot and edited for such national PBS programs as The Frontline, Nova and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour; produced and wrote programs including Sinking The Lusitania, Occupied Japan, and episodes of The Great Lodges of The National Parks and Great American Railway Journeys; and served as a production executive managing personnel and finance activities for OPB’s national PBS projects including History Detectives, West Point, Kingdom of David, The Aleutians, and stories for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Booth served as Executive Producer and Director of Production at Eight, Arizona PBS, Phoenix from 2005-2009. His credits include the history series Arizona Stories, Arizona Memories of the Seventies, Under Arizona, and Arizona Lodges. Booth ran Booth Media a web and television production services company from 2009-2011, then returned to public media as Deputy Director of Content at KCTS9 in Seattle, Washington where he oversaw Television Production, Interactive and Community Engagement from 2011-2013. Booth is currently Executive Producer of Content at Arizona Public Media Tucson, Arizona.
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James Collins
Senior Sustainability Scientist, Arizona State University
James P. Collins is an evolutionary ecologist whose research group studies the role of host-pathogen interactions in species decline and extinction. They use amphibians, along with viral and fungal pathogens, as models for studying factors that control population dynamics. His other research is focused on intellectual factors that have shaped the development of ecology as a discipline, and on ecological ethics.
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Sam Weiss Evans
Science and Technology Studies Scholar, Harvard University and Tufts University
Sam Weiss Evans’s research analyzes the way that people determine what counts as research and technology of security concern, and how the process of shaping things of security concern also shapes the governance system around them. It draws on and contributes to the literature on classification, boundary work, international political/technological institutions, and the co-production of social and technological systems. Topically, he is currently focused on the governance of security concerns within synthetic biology, and has an ongoing interest in the governance systems for conventional and cyber “dual-use” technology.
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Megan Palmer
Senior Research Scholar, Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
Dr. Megan J. Palmer is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. She leads a research and practice program on risk governance in emerging technology development, with a focus on how security is conceived and managed as biotechnology becomes increasing accessible. Her current projects focus on assessing strategies for governing dual use research, analyzing the international diffusion of safety norms and practices, and the understanding the security implications of alternative technology design decisions.
Previously, Dr. Palmer spent five years directing the policy-related research program for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (Synberc), a multi-university research center in synthetic biology. Within Synberc, she led and contributed to projects in safety and security, property rights, and community organization and governance. She has also held positions as the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC, a research scientist at the California Center for Quantitative Bioscience at the University of California Berkeley (where she was also an affiliate of Lawrence Berkeley National Labs), and a postdoctoral scholar in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University (when she first became a CISAC affiliate).
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Craig Miller
Science Editor, KQED Public Media Northern California
Craig Miller is a multi-faceted journalist at home on either end of the microphone, he brings three decades of diverse experience to KQED’s science coverage. Prior to his current assignment, Craig led the team that launched KQED’s award-winning Climate Watch project in 2008. From producing and directing documentaries on public television to his reporting for outlets such as CNN and National Geographic Channel, Craig’s background makes him uniquely suited to help lead KQED’s Science and Environment editorial team. As a radio correspondent for KQED’s The California Report, Craig has reported extensively on environmental and resource issues facing California and the American West.
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Maria Chavez
Executive Director, BioCurious
As a Board Member and Executive Director at BioCurious, Maria Chavez has organized events, classes and community projects for the past 4 years. She is also a Board Member of Real Vegan Cheese, an open source project to create a synthetic cheese from genetically modified yeast. She has recently become an adviser to the Latin American Network of Biohacker Spaces (SynTechBio). She has been a leader on two iGEM teams in 2014 and 2015 and a member of multiple community lab science projects. Maria’s ambition is to continue to push open source science and for the creation of more biohacking spaces, democratizing science globally. She believes in pushing science literacy and advocacy. Maria has an extensive technical background with communications, project management, marketing, website, and database knowledge. Experienced in the corporate software, non-profit, healthcare, bio-tech and research industries.
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David Gillum
Chief of Staff, Environmental Health and Safety; Director, Biosafety and Biosecurity, Arizona State University
As a leader in safety, compliance, and environmental health, David Gillum’s goal is to ensure that research, teaching, manufacturing, and entrepreneurial activities are performed in a manner that is customer-friendly and reduces bureaucratic burden while maintaining compliance with federal, state, city, and institutional requirements. He has over twenty years of experience in creating an effective and robust safety culture at institutions of higher learning and extensive expertise as an effective safety leader, fostering success through open communication, collaboration, and innovation. He has a keen interest in improving business operations and processes, while delivering financial efficiencies. Davis has managed comprehensive EHS programs to ensure a safe and healthful workplace and my work history demonstrates my ability to implement, promote, and direct EHS management programs. He is a passionate administrator with strong skills in coaching and mentoring and strive to empower employees. He has actively recruited, trained, and motivated a diverse workforce to produce and maintain a well-run, service-driven team. His broad safety background includes biosafety, chemical safety, emergency response, environmental health, hazardous waste, hazardous materials shipping, laboratory safety, occupational health, research compliance, and sustainability management. David has delivered improvements in safety, security, and regulatory compliance in multidisciplinary environments, encompassing multiple stakeholders with differing perspectives, and complex regulatory frameworks.
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TEAM
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Cody Sheehy
Producer / Director
Co-founder and Head of Video Production, Rhumbline Media LLC
Cody Sheehy, is an Emmy award winning filmmaker responsible for the creative vision and execution of high impact documentary and social media campaigns at Rhumbline Media. Cody has successfully produced documentaries and campaigns all over the world, from the Steppes of Mongolia, the Australian Outback, to the Jungles of Costa Rica. His films are focused on stories about our changing world told from the perspective of people in science and the natural environment and have aired on PBS affiliate stations across the United States, Amazon Prime, the Internet and in film festivals. He is also the co-founder of a technology startup company, Filmstacker, that is the first online collaborative video platform to offer real time dynamic exploration of video stories that are created with machine learning. Cody is also the video coordinator for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where he manages a documentary film unit for the University of Arizona. His unique ability to tell these stories stems from his long passion for science, technology and the environment. He holds a Master’s of Science in Ecology, is a published author in scientific journals, and has worked closely with academics from around the world for nearly two decades. It is his passion to continue to weave science into communication packages that are effective, inspiring, and that have impact in a challenging communication environment.
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Samira Kiani
Producer
Assistant Professor, Arizona State University
kianilab.com
Samira Kiani’s career is built around her passion for applying the CRISPR technology to synthetic biology. She has demonstrated multiple transformative innovations with CRISPR, including modulatory circuits that precisely control gene modifications. As an Assistant Professor in the school of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University, she has established her own independent research program to combine CRISPR technology with Synthetic biology with an interest to develop safer and controllable gene therapies. She has been working in the area of genetic engineering since 2010 in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), when zinc finger nucleases and Tale Nucleases were introduced for genome engineering in human somatic and stem cells. In 2013, she started to work with the CRISPR technology while pursuing her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Ron Weiss (MIT). During her postdoctoral years, she established collaborative projects with pioneers of the field of CRISPR, including Dr. George Church’s lab (Harvard) to further advance CRISPR technology. She is the recipient of DARPA Young Faculty Award, and serves in the organizing committee of multiple CRISPR and Synthetic Biology conferences and have published high impact papers in the field of CRISPR and synthetic biology.
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Nicholas Shadid
Campaign Co-producer
Course Creator, E and C International
Nicholas Shadid is a consultant and international affairs course creator for E and C International, headquartered in Yantai China. He received a bachelor’s’ degree in Intercultural Studies from Baptist Bible College and a Masters’ in International Affairs and Administration from Missouri State University. Additionally, he has conducted five years of research in the school of International Affairs and Diplomacy At Renmin University of China. Nick is a former editor, translator and occasional program host for Chinese Central Television. He also worked as the internationalization advisor for Wanhua Chemical Co. He has lived in China for seven years.
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Craig Boesewetter
Designer, Developer and Web Strategist
Co-founder Rhumbline Media
Craig Boesewetter has been building websites for over a decade and is currently a Web Designer at The University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and co-founder of Rhumbline Media, an imaginative multimedia company. Craig’s specialty is combining his formal training in graphic design and fine art with modern web technologies by creating smart and intuitive user experiences. As a lifelong learner, Craig is always keeping up to date with modern web trends and helps carve the path into the future of web design.
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Kim Daly
UX/UI Designer, Creative Strategist
Co-founder Rhumbline Media
Over the course of her twenty year career, Kim Daly has honed skills in visual design, strategic thinking, user-experience, and creative direction. She’s worked with exceptional clients across sectors from retail to travel and education to tech, including notable brands like: Nike, AT&T, Dow, Microsoft, American Red Cross, and Sierra Club. She has founded two start-ups in tech and media. She loves to pitch big ideas, create simplicity from complex UX, and make engaging design at every touchpoint. She earned a BFA in Visual Communication from University of Arizona and expands her abilities by attending national conferences, networking with local talent, and participating in forums.