Engineering Life

Profile

Robert Smith is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

His research examines the social, political and policy dimensions of biological engineering, particularly the ways in which they are made and governed. He is currently examining attempts to engineer life at the 'genome scale' and the role of research funding organisations as a site for democratically governing science.

He is CoI on the ESRC-NSF project, Future Organisms, which examines the emergence of synthetic genomics in the UK, USA and Japan. He is CoI (RRI co-lead) on the UKRI Advanced Therapeutics Engineering Biology Hub and CoI (Governance co-lead) on NSF Global Center for Reliable and Scalable Biofoundries for Biomanufacturing and Global Bioeconomy. 

Rob also leads a collaborative project with the Research Council of Norway to develop new processes for responsible innovation in two European Partnership Funding Programmes (in materials science and health research), and is RRI advisor to the UKRI Environmental Biotechnology Innovation Centre, and co-leads the EPSRC/BBSRC Environmental Biotechnology Network's Social Science Working Group. He is a coordinator of the Edinburgh Hub for Responsible Innovation, and the university's representative to the Public Interest Technology Network.