Hannah Landecker - US grants

This Nanotechnology in Undergraduate Education (NUE) award to Rice University supports Dr. Kristen M. Kulinowski, Department of Chemistry, for her work to develop and implement a new course on nanotechnology. The course, entitled "Nanotechnology: Content and Context," aims to introduce the essential scientific and technical content of nanotechnology and the essential ethical, political and social contexts of nanotechnology research through a one-semester multi-disciplinary undergraduate course. Science/engineering majors and social science/humanities majors alike will benefit by learning about both the specific technology and the social impacts and cultural meaning of science and technology in the same class. Students will engage directly with both working scientists and with the heated public debate over its potential impacts on society. They will be asked to acquire a technical understanding of nanotechnology (e.g., the methods of visualization, experimentation, manufacture, and the evaluation of what is and is not technically feasible) as well as a nuanced understanding of scientific and technical research as a social and political process (issues of ethics, regulation, risk assessment, history, funding, intellectual property, controversy and conflict). By combining these skills in the classroom the proposed work will cultivate a critical and civil discussion of science and technology in an emerging field amongst a younger generation. Dr. Kulinowski is joined in this work by Professor Chris Kelty in the Anthropology department and several other faculty members from the schools of science, engineering and social science.

The proposal for this award was received in response to the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Education announcement, NSF 03-444, category NUE and was jointly funded by the Divison of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) in the Directorate for Engineering (ENG) and the Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SES) in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE).

Introduction
The notion of a signal plays a very important role in contemporary biology. From cell signaling to environmental signals as external determinants of gene expression, signals are conceptual cornerstones to models of life. In the lab, they are experimentally manipulated and pharmaceutically targeted objects.

Intellectual merit
Unlike the gene, the signal has received little attention in the science and technology studies literature. This research project examines how signals came into life science, with a focus on metabolic hormone biology after 1950. The book that will eventually result from this research will elaborate the history of the discoveries of hormonal mechanisms; it will, at the same time, serve as an unprecedented theoretical resource for understanding where the biological notion of a signal comes from and what shapes its uses today in biology and society. Much is known about the history of the idea of DNA as information. The history of the signal however, is an underexplored story of cybernetics and engineering practices of control and communication on biology, a history that unfolds in the realms of steroid biochemistry, metabolic regulation, insect chemical communication, and work not at the cell?s nucleus but at its membranes. Related scholarship has focused on pre-1950 endocrinology and sex hormones; by contrast, this work will provide a compelling narrative of how hormones went molecular, explaining how the very category of hormone begins to fray as it is subsumed under the signal along with neurotransmitters, cytokines, and growth factors.

Potential Broader Impacts
As life science turns increasingly toward fathoming protein-protein interactions, gene regulation, and the regulatory role of the cellular and external environment, this history becomes increasingly timely. Signals are constitutive to biological life and thought, and have profound impact on society in terms of models of the body and health, understandings of gene-environment interaction, and the consequent biotechnical outcomes of intervening in signaling cascades. An accessible history and theory of the signal will benefit readers in life sciences, history, philosophy and sociology of science, and a broader educated audience.

Under the direction of Hannah Landecker, post-doctoral scholar Nadine Levine, will carry out a two year laboratory ethnography focusing on the impact of big data on the science of metabolism. This study of metabolomics, the post-genomic study of the molecules and processes that make up metabolism, will serve as a case study for the role and impact of big data in biomedical research.


The findings of this project will contribute to science policy discussions on the key opportunities and challenges facing the increasingly prominent field of metabolomics, as well as other fields of data-intensive research. Moreover, the findings of this project will provide collaborative and educational resources, which will enable students, researchers, and members of the public to understand how,and with what consequences for the diagnosis and treatment of disease, new understandings of metabolism are being generated with big data.