Programme for Applied Ethics Research

Programme for Applied Ethics Research

Crossover Research. Well constructed systems biology Project

Funding: The Research Council of Norway - ELSA Programme
Duration: 2010 – 2014
Project manager: Rune Nydal
Project summary
Crossover Research has been funded by the Norwegian Research Council to develop arenas for learning processes between Ethical Legal and Social Aspects (ELSA) research and researchers in technology and natural sciences, in this case biology, medicine and computer science. By engaging in the development of the increasingly important field of systems biology applied to cancer research, the project responds to our need to understand and organise emerging biotechnologies. A focus of this project is to make more manifest what types of skills are necessary in order to carry out interdisciplinary, interactive projects. By integrating researchers and by combining perspectives from the social sciences, natural sciences and technology the project aims at examining and improving the viability of systems biology research. The participants of the integrated project are motivated by the goal to search for epistemic and acceptable ethical-political conditions for realization of a systems biology in the context of meeting urgent societal needs. This constructive goal enables real-time reflection on the interactions between the partners in the integrated project and on its consequences, mapping how mutual learning processes are stimulated or how they fail. By combining resources from people who for many years have worked in integrated projects where STS and applied ethics approaches is merged with biotechnology and systems biology, the project provides a uniting framework critically pursuing time-consuming interdisciplinary work. 
Project website: https://www.ntnu.edu/crossover-research