Press Release: Hastings Fellow Alondra Nelson Named to Key Role

PRESS RELEASE Contact: Susan Gilbert For Immediate Release 1-845-424-4040, ext. 244   communications@thehastingscenter.org   Hastings Fellow Alondra Nelson Named to Key Role

NEW YORK, February 22 –Alondra Nelson, a Hastings Center Fellow, Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, and President of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), was appointed by President Joe Biden to the position of Deputy Director for Science and Society in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) last month. Nelson is the first person in this role, which brings social science expertise into the work of federal science and technology policy.

Hastings Center Fellows are an elected group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment, whose work has informed scholarship and/or public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, life sciences research and the environment. Hastings Center Fellows may be academic bioethicists, scholars from other disciplines, scientists, journalists, lawyers, novelists, artists or highly accomplished persons from other spheres. Their common distinguishing feature is uncommon insight and impact in areas of critical concern to the Center – how best to understand and manage the inevitable values questions, moral uncertainties and societal effects that arise as a consequence of advances in the life sciences, the need to improve health and health care for people of all ages, and mitigation of human impact on the natural world.

The OSTP, an agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1976, has a threefold mission: first, to provide the President and his senior staff with accurate, relevant, and timely scientific and technical advice on all matters of consequence; second, to ensure that the policies of the Executive Branch are informed by sound science; and third, to ensure that the scientific and technical work of the Executive Branch is properly coordinated so as to provide the greatest benefit to society.

The Hastings Center uses an interdisciplinary process to analyze complex issues from several different perspectives—legal, medical, biological, philosophical, economic, and personal—to seek common ground. Its two peer-reviewed journals, The Hastings Center Report and Ethics & Human Research, publish distinguished scholarship and policy guidance on ethical questions in clinical practice and science and health policy.

For more information, please contact:

Susan Gilbert
Director of Communications
The Hastings Center
gilberts@thehastingscenter.org
845-424-4040, ext. 244