Project at a glance

Science, technology, and society

Our research aims to understanding the recent transformations of the biomedical sciences and their relationships to society.

1. The data deluge

This project focusses on the increasingly important role of large data stets and databases in biomedical research. It attempts to show how a new way of producing knowledge, based on collecting, comparing, and classifying data, has emerged in the experimental life sciences during the twentieth century. This new “way of knowing” challenges traditional notions of authorship, credit, and community and the very meaning of scientific knowledge.

2. Making the global environment

This project aims to understand how the environment became a global scientific object. It explores the creation of large data sets about the weather, biodiversity, and pollution, from local observations and their role in international environmental governance.

3. Personalized genomic medicine

This projects brings the recent development of personalized genomic medicine into historical perspective. It attempts to understand how it marks a profound rupture from more than a century of medical discourse focussed on universalism and redefined the relationships between physicians and patients.

4. Science education

This project explores different ways of engaging K-12 students in a better understanding of contemporary biology. It focusses especially on how bioinformatics tool, from sequence alignments to protein folding simulations, can be used in schools.