Responsibility in Engineering Life

As the DDW Bio Design day, the Wednesday of the Dutch Design Week was a day worth mentioning. Correspondingly, TU Delft had a special summer school program in collaboration with IDEA League for a group of master’s and PhD students. Their program started at BioArt Laboratories, with two lectures about Responsibility in Engineering Life:

Complicating Complexity: social concerns on engineering life by Laurens Landeweerd, and Of genetic safeguards, chassis cells and artistic interventions:
Responsible research and innovation by Amalia Kallergi.

Laurens Landeweerd is a philosopher who holds a position as assistant professor at Radboud University’s Institute for Science in Society. He has contributed to a series of national and international projects on the ethics and governance of synthetic biology, in specific in relation to issues related to the Anthropocene and human enhancement. During the first of both talks, Laurens Landeweerd discussed the relation between nature and technology. He addressed notions of safety in systems biology and synthetics, in relation to contexts of application and relevant values and worldviews.

Amalia Kallergi is a researcher, educator and maker with a natural tendency to blur and cross disciplinary boundaries. Amalia has been investigating the role of bioart, DIY-biology and games as platforms of participation in the societal debate surrounding biotechnology. She is now working as a postdoctoral researcher for the Institute for Science in Society (Radboud University, Nijmegen) on Responsible Research and Innovation in the SafeChassis synthetic biology project. Her lecture was on genetic safeguards, chassis cells and artistic interventions: Responsible research and innovation in the SafeChassis project.

After the lectures, the group visited our exhibition and continued their Dutch Design Week field trip at Strijp-S.