Embedding Responsible Innovation within Synthetic Biology research and innovation:insights from a UK multi-disciplinary research centre

Over the last decade the discourse of responsible innovation (RI) has become a significant feature of debates concerning the relationships between science, innovation and society in the fields of biosciences and biotechnologies. We document how this discourse has evolved over the period 2014-2019 at a Synthetic Biology Research Centre hosted within a University in the UK (BrisSynBio). We describe how an approach to RI has evolved to include but go beyond public engagement, by encouraging practices aimed at anticipation, reflexivity and deliberation in sometimes creative and innovative ways. We describe how the Centre has struggled to capture the impacts of RI interventions on the everyday practices and behaviours of scientists and the outcomes of their work. The study reveals the importance of leadership, creativity, innovation, institutional support, openness to change and mechanisms of capturing impact for successful RI institutionalisation.</p

Assessing responsible innovation training

There is broad agreement that one important aspect of responsible innovation (RI) is to provide training on its principles and practices to current and future researchers and innovators, notably including doctoral students. Much less agreement can be observed concerning the question of what this training should consist of, how it should be delivered and how it could be assessed. The increasing institutional embedding of RI leads to calls for the alignment of RI training with training in other subjects. One can therefore observe a push towards the official assessment of RI training, for example in the recent call for proposals for centres for doctoral training by UK Research and Innovation. This editorial article takes its point of departure from the recognition that the RI community will need to react to the call for assessment of RI training. It provides an overview of the background and open questions around RI training and assessment as a background of examples of RI training assessment at doctoral level. There is unlikely to be one right way of assessing RI training across institutions and disciplines, but we expect that the examples provided in this article can help RI scholars and practitioners orient their training and its assessment in ways that are academically viable as well as supportive of the overall aims of RI

Effects of childhood socioeconomic position on subjective health and health behaviours in adulthood: how much is mediated by adult socioeconomic position?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Adult socioeconomic position (SEP) is one of the most frequently hypothesised indirect pathways between childhood SEP and adult health. However, few studies that explore the indirect associations between childhood SEP and adult health systematically investigate the mediating role of multiple individual measures of adult SEP for different health outcomes. We examine the potential mediating role of individual measures of adult SEP in the associations of childhood SEP with self-rated health, self-reported mental health, current smoking status and binge drinking in adulthood.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Data came from 10,010 adults aged 25-64 years at Wave 3 of the Survey of Family, Income and Employment in New Zealand. The associations between childhood SEP (assessed using retrospective information on parental occupation) and self-rated health, self-reported psychological distress, current smoking status and binge drinking were determined using logistic regression. Models were adjusted individually for the mediating effects of education, household income, labour market activity and area deprivation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Respondents from a lower childhood SEP had a greater odds of being a current smoker (OR 1.70 95% CI 1.42-2.03), reporting poorer health (OR 1.82 95% CI 1.39-2.38) or higher psychological distress (OR 1.60 95% CI 1.20-2.14) compared to those from a higher childhood SEP. Two-thirds to three quarters of the association of childhood SEP with current smoking (78%), and psychological distress (66%) and over half the association with poor self-rated health (55%) was explained by educational attainment. Other adult socioeconomic measures had much smaller mediating effects.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study suggests that the association between childhood SEP and self-rated health, psychological distress and current smoking in adulthood is largely explained through an indirect socioeconomic pathway involving education. However, household income, area deprivation and labour market activity are still likely to be important as they are intermediaries in turn, in the socioeconomic pathway between education and health.</p

Assessing Responsible Innovation Training

There is broad agreement that one important aspect of responsible innovation (RI) is to provide training on its principles and practices to current and future researchers and innovators, notably including doctoral students. Much less agreement can be observed concerning the question of what this training should consist of, how it should be delivered and how it could be assessed. The increasing institutional embedding of RI leads to calls for the alignment of RI training with training in other subjects. One can therefore observe a push towards the official assessment of RI training, for example in the recent call for proposals for centres for doctoral training by UK Research and Innovation. This editorial article takes its point of departure from the recognition that the RI community will need to react to the call for assessment of RI training. It provides an overview of the background and open questions around RI training and assessment as a background of examples of RI training assessment at doctoral level. There is unlikely to be one right way of assessing RI training across institutions and disciplines, but we expect that the examples provided in this article can help RI scholars and practitioners orient their training and its assessment in ways that are academically viable as well as supportive of the overall aims of RI

Dancing with the Troubles of AI

We are 4 creative ethic-ticians, working in the areas of design, fashion, arts and philosophy, making tools and spaces to inspire, drive, support and assess innovation responsive to societal and planetary crises, which we call ethics through design. We created this ritual to make time to be in our bodies, along with a team that includes musicians, performance artists, aikido masters, HIT trainers, sci-fi enthusiasts, and street dancers, to develop a transdisciplinary choreography. Together we have made a ritual to embrace the magical, illogical, delightful and laughable. We rehearsed with our bodies, protocols for anticipating, noticing, and addressing ethical tensions, to nurture a mindset of collaborative creativity and radical care. Beyond the duties of data management, privacy, justice, diversity, we aim to support abilities to design for “a world where many worlds fit”; capacities to respond to uncertainty with music, movements, and ethical doings

Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) for researchers. An introduction, february 2018

Recurs d'aprenentatge de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.Recurso de aprendizaje de la "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya".Learning material of the "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya"

Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) for researchers. An introduction, february 2018

Recurs d'aprenentatge de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.Recurso de aprendizaje de la "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya".Learning material of the "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya"

Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) for researchers. An introduction, february 2018

Recurs d'aprenentatge de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.Recurso de aprendizaje de la "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya".Learning material of the "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya"

Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) for researchers. An introduction, february 2018

Recurs d'aprenentatge de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.Recurso de aprendizaje de la "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya".Learning material of the "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya"