Innogen is the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics. It is part of the ESRC Genomics Network , three Centres across the UK studying the evolution of genomics and life sciences and their far-reaching social and economic implications.

Innogen is based at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with the Open University, and is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The researchers working at the Innogen Centre include social scientists, economists, and lawyers. The Centre will also engage with a wide range of stakeholders, nationally and internationally, including scientists, industry and private interest groups, policy makers and regulators, and citizens and public interest groups. Innogen coordinates a number of research projects.

Researchers: Dr Gill Haddow; Dr James Mittra; Dr Sarah Parry; Mrs Ann Bruce; Prof David Wield; Prof Joyce Tait; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Prof. Joyce Tait

Project Website >>

Keywords: Agriculture and Food, Bio/Life Sciences, Developing World, Environment, Governance of S &T, Innovation, Policy, Public Engagement, Regulation, Science

The aim is to investigate the interaction of genes and environment in the onset and progression of the serious diseases affecting the Scottish population. 21CGH brings together the parallel, yet different, projects of Generation Scotland and UK Biobank. SHEFC has funded the appointment of Dr Gill Haddow in Innogen and Dr Rena Gertz in the AHRB Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law as Research Fellows for 3 years to take forward the associated ELSA programme within 21CGH.

Researchers: Dr Gill Haddow

Contact: Gill Haddow

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

Outline of Research Aims Innogen was invited to tender for this study by ESTO, based in the EC Institute for Prospective Technology Studies (IPTS) in Seville. Our ability to link with a team of eminent scientists based in Roslin Institute and the Genesis Faraday Partnership in Roslin, along with the legal expertise of our colleagues in the AHRB Law Centre, were instrumental in our being awarded the contract.

Researchers:

Contact:

Keywords: (None)

Funded under the EC NEST programme, this short project with the Ecole des Mines and University of Twente looked for tools that policy makers can apply in the assessment and support of emerging and breakthrough science and technology fields, such as Nanotechnology. The principal researchers in Edinburgh were Joyce Tait and Robin Williams. Link to short summary of outputs - NEST

Researchers: Dr Graham Spinardi; Dr James Stewart; Prof Joyce Tait; Prof Robin Williams

Contact:

Project Website >>

Keywords: Innovation, Nanotech, Policy

Climate change is now recognised as a key driver of energy policy internationally, and the British government has signalled that renewable energy technologies should be central in the future development of the UK electricity supply industry. In this context, renewable technologies are seen not only as appropriate responses to climate change, but also as opportunities for building new industrial and innovation systems. Parts of the UK, such as Scotland, have substantial renewable energy resources, and research and industrial bases that could take advantage of new market opportunities. In practice, adapting industrial and innovation systems to emerging technologies is far from straightforward. This project will examine enablers and barriers to developing innovation systems in wind (on- and off-shore) and marine (tidal and wave) technologies in the UK, with a particular focus on Scotland.The aim is to inform policy support for these strategically-important industries. Comparisons will be drawn with renewables innovation systems elsewhere in Europe.

Researchers: Dr Mark Winskel; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Mark Winskel

Project Website >>

Keywords: Energy, Environment, Innovation, Policy, Regulation, Renewables

FP6 Co-ordination Action on Integrative Approaches to Risk Governance


TNO, Delft, Netherlands
Innogen, Edinburgh, UK
Symlog, Paris, France
Joint Research Centre, IPSC/KAM (ISPRA), EU/Italy
Dialogik, Stuttgart, Germany
ISIG (Institute of International Sociology of Gorizia), Gorizia, Italy

Project summary

This project will develop an integrative risk governance model choosing:

- an open project architecture rather than using a specific risk governance model;

- a policy learning approach as the central mode of operation, allowing for integrating input across different science fields, across different geographical boundaries, and across the science-policy interface;

- cases related to complex, ambiguous risk fields where the agreement of risk governance approaches is limited, or related to new, emerging risks.

In the preparatory phase the key project partners will develop a framework for risk governance learning, including classifications of risk governance situations and of social and cultural settings, criteria for `good quality' processes in governance, methods to promote learning within and across risk fields.

The second phase will include six risk case fields involving uncertainty/ambiguity or novel challenges:

Biotechnology / stem cells (leader: Innogen, UK, prof. Tait)

Radioactive waste (leader: Institute Symlog, France, dr. Mays)

Nanotechnology (leader: JRC/IPSC/KAM, EU, ir. Craye and dr. Funtowicz)

Climate change (leader: Dialogic, Germany, prof. Renn)

Sediments (leader: TNO, Netherlands, dr. van der Vlies)

Electromagnetic Fields (leader: ISIG, Italy, prof. de Machi and prof. Pellizoni)

Researchers: Prof Joyce Tait

Contact:

Project Website >>

Keywords: Bio/Life Sciences, Risk

The People's Republic of China (hereafter China) has in recent years begun to be remarkably active in a number of areas of ICT interoperability standards. This raises a number of issues for China about standardisation processes: their standardisation strategy and its relationship with technology promotion policy. The outcome of these processes could have important consequences for the global ICT market and for the European economy.

http://www.issti.ed.ac.uk/documents.php?item=97

The European Union has agreed to fund the China EU Information Technology Standards Research Partnership. This project will promote research collaboration and engagement between research, innovation and policy communities in relation to Information Technology standardisation in China and Europe. This project brings together leading European and Chinese centres for research into ICT Interoperability Standards to undertake a comparative examination of ICT standardisation processes and associated policies between EU and China. This project, led by Robin Williams, Ian Graham, James Stewart and Xiaobai Shen at The University of Edinburgh, Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, is in collaboration with the University of Oslo (Norway), RWTH-Aachen University and ISI Fraunhofer Institute (Germany), Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania) as well as Chinese partners: Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Policy and Management. The 24 month project, due to start in February 2008, will develop a knowledge network of leading players in the field, within Europe, China and beyond. The project will examine the new ICT standardisation activity emerging in China, apparently linked to its goals to promote indigenous technology. It will compare these emerging standardisation processes with those that have emerged and are being currently pursued by European players. A set of empirical studies will focus upon a selected sample drawn from the five areas of standardisation flagged in the European Union Information Societies Technologies RTD programme as bearing critically to European technology and industrial strategy, including 4th Generation Mobile Telephony and Audio-Visual Systems and Mobile Broadcasting. The studies will examine the standardisation approach adopted; the strategies of public policy, technical and industrial players in relation to standards. It will explore the likely implementation and uptake of standards and their outcomes for new technological innovation and markets. A particular interest is whether the outcomes will be open standards, alignment between regional economies , competitive standards processes leading to so-called "standards wars" or the fragmentation of global markets. Attention will be paid to processes of social learning by standardisation bodies, technology and industrial players and policy actors. The study findings will be discussed with Chinese and European standards bodies and policy communities, who will assist in explicating the policy implications.

Researchers: Dr Ian Graham; Dr James Stewart; Dr Xiaobai Shen; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Professor Robin Williams

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

Innogen members are contributing to a European team of researchers working on this project, to provide advice for members of the European Parliament through ETEPS (a network for European Techno-Economic Policy Support). The objective is to provide an assessment of the consequences, opportunities and challenges that applications of modern biotechnology present for the EU, to identify and quantify the contributions of modern biotechnology to the achievement of major European policy objectives as formulated in the Lisbon Agenda and the sustainable development strategy. Innogen's contribution will be in mapping the adoption of modern biotechnology in primary production/agro-food in the EU and evaluating the consequences, opportunities and challenges of applications in primary production and agro-food.

Researchers: Dr Alessandro Rosiello; Mrs Ann Bruce; Prof Joyce Tait

Contact: Professor Joyce Tait

Project Website >>

Keywords: Agriculture and Food, Bio/Life Sciences, European

The aim of PROMETEA is to develop a better understanding of gender issues in engineering and technology research settings, in order to propose effective measures and recommendations to empower women engineers careers in academic and industrial research in Europe. A technological and economical sustainable development depends on the ability to promote a diverse and creative research sector, which is a key issue both in the European and in national research policies.

Researchers: Dr James Stewart; Dr Lisa Lee; Dr Wendy Faulkner

Contact: Dr Wendy Faulkner

Project Website >>

Keywords: Expertise, Gender, Management, Policy

Today the market for complex IT is undergoing radical changes in nature and operation. It is increasingly shaped by new kinds of specialist intermediary organisations that link technology supply and use through offering a commodified form of knowledge and advice.

Industry analysts and IT research firms have been increasingly successful in exploiting the uncertainties that exist in technology procurement through generating highly influential assessments of the relative location and standing of individual vendors and the efficacies of their products. The demand for such advice is large and growing (with the bigger firms spending annually up to £1 million on IT research). These assessments have proven to be extremely effective in swaying procurement decisions and influencing vendor product strategies.

Yet, despite the growing importance of industry analysts not much is currently known about this specific form of expertise, the precise characteristics of knowledge produced, the kind of influence analysts exert, or their role in organising the IT marketplace. It is hypothesised that, because of the increasing range, escalating complexity and rapid evolution of IT products, the knowledge produced by these kinds of organisations is gaining relevance. They are analysed here as '*Promissory Organisations*' to reflect the fact they are highly successful in mobilising promise and expectations amongst supplier and user communities alike. These and similar types of complex market shaping phenomena can be seen in a wide range of sectors (especially those dogged by high levels of uncertainty). In order to characterise the role and influence of Promissory Organisations there is an urgent need for the Social Study of Technology and Innovation to develop the analytical tools and frameworks to allow researchers to carry out a systematic and sophisticated study of these actors.

To this purpose, this Fellowship will investigate industry analysts through an innovative and interdisciplinary enquiry that, while remaining rooted in Science and Technology Studies, also draws on exciting developments in Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Finance.See http://www.neilpollock.moonfruit.com for more details on the nature of the research that will be conducted.

Researchers: Dr Neil Pollock

Contact: Dr Neil Pollock

Keywords: (None)

Robin Williams is Co-Investigator with Dr Guro Huby, Prof. Aziz Sheikh, Dr Kathrin Cresswell and Dr Bernard Fernando in this £703,125 project led by Hilary Pinnock from the Division of Community Health Sciences of Edinburgh University's College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine.

Funded by the UK Department of Health, Connecting for Health Evaluation Programme project (CFHEP 010) the project runs from 1st September 2008 - 31st January 2011. It will examine how the array of new information technology based services being introduced into general practice under the NHS £11bn 'Connecting for Health' programme may affect relationships between health care professionals and with patients.

Researchers: Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Prof Robin Williams

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

The central focus of Innogen research in developing countries is on the role partnerships play in driving research, innovation, technology transfer and development embedded within crosscutting themes of governance and globalisation and public engagement with science. This section reports on two projects funded under the Innogen programme, (i) in Africa and (ii) in Asia and Latin America. Several other small projects have also been added in this area:

Researchers: Dr James Smith; Dr Matthew Harsh

Contact: James Smith

Project Website >>

Keywords: Africa, Agriculture and Food, Developing World, Governance of S &T, Innovation, Latin America, Public Engagement, R & D

EC IST funded project. Studied issues around the adoption of multi-standard radio interfaces and MIMO antenna in future mobile devices, and contributed to the business case, technical development and standardistation process. Conducted with partners Philips (UK), Siemens (D), TUHH (Hamburg,D), IST (Lisbon,P), Telenor (Norway). ISSTI Researchers: James Stewart Robin Williams, Ian Graham. Lisa Lee and Mark Winskel

The FLOWS project performed a survey of current developments in wireless communications to place system in relation to parallel developments in telecommunications standards,infrastructure and services. A detailed strategic analysis was undertaken of the interaction between the technology and the strategies of key players to identify barriers to uptake and use, including regulation, the provision of local network infrastructure and services and the potential resistance of operators to network interoperability. IN particular it drew conclusions over the technical, commercial and regulatory issues related to fixed-mobile convergence In addition work was done on the development of scenario methods linking scenarios and use cases used for design, with those used for strategic analysis and planning.

Research Reports co-authored by ISSTI team

• James Stewart et al (2004),Analysis of the Market for Multiple Standard Wireless Communications,FLOWS Project Report D17 UoE/FLOWS/EC IST, Dec 2004,pp84 . [Download pdf]
• James Stewart et al (2003),Cost and Benefit of Use Scenarios: The selection environment for MIMO-enabled multi-standard wireless devices including cost benefit analysis of various convergence technologies,FLOWS Project Report D12 EC IST . [download main report in pdf] [Download Zipped WORD files]
• James Stewart et al, 2002, Scenarios and Definition of Services,FLOWS Report D6: EC IST, FLOWS, 2002. [download pdf]

Researchers: Dr Ian Graham; Dr James Stewart; Dr Lisa Lee; Dr Mark Winskel; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: James Stewart

Keywords: ICT, Industry, Innovation, R & D, Regulation, Standards, Telecommunications

This project addressed the perceived post-war failure of UK industry to exploit indigenous inventions through a comparative study of innovation by firms in the UK, Germany, Japan and the USA.

The methodological focus for this study was to track the exploitation of inventions patented and licensed by the British Technology Group (and its predecessors, the National Research Development Corporation). These case studies of innovation encompassed two, inter-related, levels of analysis: at the micro-level of firm behaviour, the processes of technology transfer and the translation of inventions into commercial products; at the macro-level, the role of structural factors such as national systems of innovation and financial investment regimes.

Researchers: Dr Graham Spinardi; Dr Wendy Faulkner; Prof Donald MacKenzie; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Dr Graham Spinardi

Keywords: (None)

This ESRC-funded research project was conducted by Dr Wendy Faulkner of the Science Studies Unit. It was prompted by both scholarly interest – in apparently durable ‘equations’ between masculinity and technology – and by policy concerns – about the continued predominance of men in professional engineering. Unlike much previous research on the topic, its focus was not on women engineers per se but on engineering as ‘communities of practice’, including men engineers as well as women. By bringing a ‘gender gaze’ to engineering practices, cultures and identities, it sought to reveal any subtle or ‘taken-for-granted’ gender dynamics operating: are these more comfortable to, and supportive of, (more) men engineers than women engineers?

The research design sought to conduct detailed investigations of engineers and their work, combining ethnographic methods of observation (through job shadowing) and interviews, principally in three sectors: software development, oilfield services and building design.

The central scholarly contribution of this work lies in the detailed evidence about how gender is performed and constituted as an integral part of ‘getting the job done’, and of the complex processes of ‘becoming’ and ‘belonging’ in engineering communities of practice. A second overarching theme is a trenchant critique of the conventional gendering of the technical/social dualism. Time and again, people’s talk ‘performs’ these stereotypes, but their actual practices and identities diverge. The research found no empirical evidence for the common claim that women engineers have better people skills than men engineers. (See forthcoming article in Social Studies of Science, 2007, ‘Nuts and Bolts and People’.) On a policy level, the study points to several areas where ‘culture change’ is needed in engineering:

• Much could be done to improve the process of ‘becoming’ an engineer, and so increase the retention of both women and men engineers – through good practice in engineering education and in the support of junior engineers at work.

• If the engineering profession is to overcome its image problem, it must break down stereotypes about gender and about engineering. The profession must also promote and celebrate a ‘broad church’ image of engineering – as social as well as technical, with room for diverse ‘types’ of people – if it is to attract and keep talented people in engineering.

• Employers must nurture more inclusive workplace cultures if engineering is to be more welcoming to women. There is a crying need for sensitive and sustained efforts to increase awareness amongst engineers about the numerous subtle gender exclusive and inclusive dynamics operating in engineers’ everyday interactions at work.

These findings have been extremely well received by practitioners and policy makers. In November 2005, Dr Faulkner gave a public webcast lecture at the Open University on engineering workplace cultures. In December 2005, a policy workshop was held with an invited group of 15 practitioners – from women into engineering organisations, engineering companies and professional associations – to discuss preliminary research findings. Participants commented that the study had provided for the first time solid evidence of things they knew to be an issue (a great endorsement of ethnographic research). Following this workshop, the research report was passed to Meg Munn MP, the Minister in the DTI responsible for the Government’s work on women in science and engineering which prompted a request for a private briefing with her and DTI staff.

Genders in engineering report

UKRC Research Briefing Leaflet

This project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC ref: 000230151), and has the support of the WISE (Women into Science and Engineering) Campaign and the Equal Opportunities Commission.

Researchers: Dr Wendy Faulkner

Contact: Wendy Faulkner

Project Website >>

Keywords: Gender

This project is funded by Scottish Enterprise to study support processes for biotechnology innovation in Scotland, as part of the programme of the ESRC Innogen Centre. The PI is Jane Bower Professor of Entrepreneurship at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Researchers: Dr Alessandro Rosiello; Prof Joyce Tait

Contact: Alessandro Rosiello

Project Website >>

Keywords: Bio/Life Sciences, Genomics, Innovation, Scotland

Economic and Social Research Council funded project is currently investigating the changing nature, direction and management of life science-based innovations in the pharmaceutical and health sectors. We are attempting to improve understanding of the complex and diverse strategies employed by different types of firm, and assess their impact on the scientific, technological and industrial landscape. Methods Case studies and interviews, with representatives of `big' and `medium' sized pharmaceutical companies, small and medium sized biotech companies, public sector research organisations and trade bodies Document analysis of company websites, annual reports, press releases etc Analysis of patent data and data from consultancy reports

Researchers: Dr James Mittra; Prof Donald MacKenzie; Prof Joyce Tait; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: James Mittra

Keywords: (None)

Computers increasingly play vital roles in organisations - e.g., hospitals or factories - which thus become "computer-based systems". The dependability of these systems is a major societal concern. In response, EPSRC funded the Dependability Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (DIRC) between City, Edinburgh, Lancaster, Newcastle and York universities. DIRC was based on the premise that dependability must be studied not as a purely technical issue, but as a socio-technical property of the combination of a computing system with the environments in which it is procured, developed and used. DIRC thus assembled a world class interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists and statisticians, which has achieved substantial results through a rare degree of collaboration between engineering and social sciences.

INDEED will build on DIRC's results to address important challenges in extending these results and combining them with current practices, to ensure a real, long-term impact on the design and evaluation of dependable systems. It will apply a multidisciplinary approach in four major research activities:

Timing and Structure. This work will further develop DIRC's "time band" concept for reasoning about processes that unfold on different time scales, from microseconds to days, within a system. We will define an appropriate descriptive language, and extend it to deal with probabilistic relationships between events in different time bands. We will then build a software tool to use in case studies, to validate the use of time bands in structuring dependable systems.

Adaptation and diversity. This activity will help designers and assessors of socio-technical systems to address some of the hard problems caused by the difficulty of predicting how people adapt to computers. We will give designers greatly enhanced abilities to analyse quantitatively, control and exploit the phenomena of adaptation and diversity, which although often recognised in informal terms need more thorough and formal treatment. Our focus will be data-rich, knowledge intensive activities that are increasingly supported by automation.

Responsibility and trust. Inappropriate allocation or perception of responsibilities, and inappropriate levels of trust in the various system components, are important causes of failure in computer-based systems. This work will support the modelling, management and analysis of responsibility and trust during the design and deployment of such systems, by developing the necessary notations, techniques and software tools.

Confidence and Uncertainty in dependability cases. A "case" is the web of evidence and reasoning through which system dependability is assessed. DIRC defined "confidence-based" cases, which describe dependability claims together with the degree of confidence that can be had in them. We will produce methods for detailing and structuring cases, using the results of work on time bands; guidance for using more diverse evidence and arguments towards increasing confidence; new interdisciplinary understanding of the factors causing people to trust a case less (or more) than its contents warrant.

These activities are integrated into a coherent programme of work. An integration mechanism is the use of real-world case studies where we work with our partners in the project (Voca, British Energy, CAA and Qinetiq) to challenge and validate our research.

Researchers: Prof Donald MacKenzie; Prof Robin Williams

Contact:

Keywords: (None)

The Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Dependability aims to address the dependability of computer-based systems. Dependability is a deliberately broad term to encompass many facets including reliability, security and availability. The project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and runs from 1st July, 2000 - 30th June, 2006. The six year funding enables DIRC to investigate the broad and fundamental problems of creating dependable systems.

Researchers: Dr Luciana D'Adderio; Prof Donald MacKenzie; Prof Robin Williams

Contact:

Project Website >>

Keywords: Computer Systems, Dependability, Design, e-commerce, ICT

A new grant under the ESRC’s Researcher Development Initiative (RDI) aims to improve the practice of interdisciplinary research between the social and natural sciences.

Drawing on ISSTI’s extensive experience in interdisciplinary research practice, Catherine Lyall and colleagues will be seeking to formalise and codify researchers’ approach to the promotion, management and evaluation of interdisciplinary research and to share this knowledge with the wider ESRC research community. A range of masterclasses will be developed with two distinct targets, aimed towards (i) post-doctoral researchers, giving them the tools they require to lead successful interdisciplinary project teams and (ii) towards graduate students embarking on interdisciplinary projects for the first time, as well as producing a handbook for conducting interdisciplinary research.

Researchers:

Contact: Catherine Lyall

Project Website >>

Keywords: Interdisciplinary, Training

This Fellowship investigates the challenges to “dependable innovation” in the context of the network organisation and modular technology production.

Today it is no longer sufficient for technologies to be innovative, they also have to be dependable (i.e. reliable, available, safe and secure). Technology validation, including virtual simulation and physical testing, is the principal means by which dependability can be achieved; yet, testing remains a neglected feature of the innovation process. This gap is all the more crucial in the face of growing technological complexity and specialisation and increasing globalisation of productive knowledge and activities. The validation challenge in this context is how to verify the properties of products (processes and services) whose design, production and maintenance are distributed across extended organisational networks and span a diverse range of functional, cultural and geographical boundaries. The Fellowship addresses the challenges to ‘managing dependable innovation’ through an interdisciplinary enquiry rooted in Innovation, Organization and Dependability Studies. The analysis is based on qualitative ethnographic research and international case study comparison. The Fellow will lead an interdisciplinary network including scholars from leading international institutes as well as practitioners from industrial, standards- and policy-making organisations.

Researchers: Dr Luciana D'Adderio

Contact: Dr Luciana D'Adderio

Project Website >>

Keywords: Dependability, ICT, Innovation, Management, Organisational Change, Simulation and Prototyping, Testing and Validation

Key developments in UK radar technology.

In this project detailed accounts of key developments in UK radar technology were analysed to address two key issues: (1) What are the processes involved in matching technological possibilities with strategic requirements, and how can the defence technology base be managed to support procurement? (2) To what extent can the defence technology base also be exploited for dual-use potential, including spin-off to civil applications?

Researchers: Dr Graham Spinardi; Prof Donald MacKenzie

Contact: Dr Graham Spinardi

Keywords: (None)

The Nework Enterprise project is investigating the development of business to business e-commerce based on Web Service and XML technologies, including the use of SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and ebXML standards.

Researchers: Dr Ian Graham; Dr Martina Gerst; Dr Neil Pollock; Prof Robin Williams

Contact:

Project Website >>

Keywords: e-commerce, ICT, Standards

This AHRB-EPSRC Research Cluster brings together designers and scholars to develop resources that address a specific contemporary design problem: making ordinary urban spaces more accessible, friendly and useable ... or, more specifically, to articulate the problematic nature of so-called non-places and their technologies. We experience non-places routinely. They include urban environments such as airports, supermarkets, motorways, hotels, and offices. What is distinctive about non-places? Why are they relevant to design? Non-place website

Researchers: Dr Ian Graham; Dr James Stewart; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: James Stewart

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

Innogen staff and associates contributed to the Risk Work Package as a component of the overall Foresight project on the Detection and Identification of Infectious Diseases. This project drew on the best available evidence to review and compare future risks from infectious diseases using a common set of metrics to: identify the factors driving changes in risk; assess how the size and nature of risks are evolving; and indicate the range of plausible future patterns of risk, taking account of the needs and views of the wider stakeholder community. The work covered plant, animal and human infectious diseases, in Africa, China and the UK.

Full reports including the Innogen team's final report "Infectious Diseases:preparing for the future. T2: Risk Analysis" can be found at http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Detection_and_Identification_of_Infectious_Diseases/Reports_and_Publications/Final_Reports/Index.html

Researchers: Prof Joyce Tait

Contact: Dr Catherine Lyall

Project Website >>

Keywords: Risk

ISSTI researchers were recently part of a consortium of leading European industrial and academic partners involved in the research and technological development project ParcelCall. The project’s aim was to create a scalable real-time, intelligent, end-to-end tracking and tracing system for transport and logistics applications - to operate across all border, carriers and transportation modes. In order to ensure seamless tracking and tracing across the entire logistics and transportation chain, the research has pointed to the need to focus on interoperability, open interfaces, and standardization. It was also found that by using an open and scalable system architecture, the ParcelCall system can be easily extended by adding new server components, whilst the use of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to complement existing automatic identification methods using bar codes and labels, allows reliable automated data capture and status acquisition for individual movements, key processes and events throughout the transport cycle. For more information, go to: http://www-i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/parcelcall/

Researchers: Dr Ian Graham; Dr James Stewart

Contact: James Stewart

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

Policy Innovation Systems for Clean Energy Security (PISCES) is a five year initiative funded by the U.K's Department for International Development (DFID). PISCES is working in partnership with Kenya, India, Sri Lanka and Tanzania to provide policy makers with information and approaches that they can apply to unlock the potential of bioenergy to improve energy access and livelihoods in poor communities.

The purpose of PISCES is to develop new knowledge and policies promoting energy access and livelihoods through bioenergy. This new knowledge will contribute to global debate on whether and how humanity should find more of our energy from bioenergy sources, and how that pathway might affect the poor and the environment.

Researchers: Shishusri Pradhan

Contact:

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

A multicentre project investigating the ways of increasing the take-up of heat pumps for residential and commercial use in Europe. ProHeatPump is supported by the EU's Intellident Energy-Europe Initiative and coordinated by swbNetze in Bremerhaven, Germany.

Researchers: Dr James Stewart; Dr Stewart Russell

Contact: Dr Stewart Russell

Project Website >>

Keywords: Energy, Governance of S &T, Markets, Policy, Renewables

There is increasing emphasis, nationally and internationally, on interdisciplinary research in order to tackle some of the world's most pressing environmental and social problems.

In the UK, we are witnessing a significant increase in planned funding for strategic interdisciplinary programmes but the lessons arising from such initiatives can be hard to capture and codify. QUEST (Quantifying and Understanding the Earth SysTem) is one of NERC's flagship programmes for Earth system science. As this programme approaches its close, NERC is keen to assess the effectiveness of QUEST's activities in interdisciplinarity (including community building) in the context of global environmental change.

By taking an in-depth look at QUEST, in conjunction with potentially comparable interdisciplinary initiatives such as the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme and the Climate Change Research Programme at the Tyndall Centre, in the UK and abroad, this research will explore ways to enhance QUEST's effectiveness throughout the rest of the programme and draw transferable lessons of relevance to emerging interdisciplinary programmes such as the Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership.

Aims and Objectives

The project will take an action-oriented approach, exploring and evaluating ways to support and expand the UK's diverse and active community of Earth system scientists; foster and enrich the development of useful and usable interdisciplinary Earth system scientists; foster useful and usable interdisciplinary Earth system resources; and provide insights about the kinds of enabling infrastructure that support collaboration, information-sharing and leveraging of resources.

These multi-factorial goals require three categories of research objectives:

I. QUEST-oriented Objectives to help the QUEST directorate and programme as it completes its activities:
1. Working in conjunction with QUEST core team to enhance QUEST's interdisciplinary performance
2. Observing and evaluating QUEST's activities
3. Delivering practical benefits to QUEST

II. Insight-utilisation Objectives to develop comparative studies in order to exploit insights from various sources:
4. Engaging with comparable initiatives, such as RELU and the Tyndall Centre's Climate Change Research Programme
5. Considering structures, mechanisms and experiences of relevant international initiatives

III. Learning (and disseminating) Objectives in order to work with QUEST to promote organisational learning and generate benefits that are more broadly applicable across the long-term future of various UK efforts to tackle complex, multidimensional challenges in this sphere:
6. Working in conjunction with QUEST core team to draw transferable lessons of relevance to the emerging programmes of the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership
7. Delivering guidance for future initiatives in a readily utilised form
8. Advancing understanding of interdisciplinarity through a community building event.

Researchers: Dr Catherine Lyall; Dr Laura Meagher; Dr Wendy Marsden; Mrs Ann Bruce

Contact: Dr Catherine Lyall

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

Science and Technology in China today:
challenges for analysis and for policy.
Research workshop: 1-5pm, Friday 8th December 2006, Old Surgeons Hall Room 1.06
The University of Edinburgh, Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation

A study on the role change and evaluation of scientist in the popularization of science (Download)
Xiao-min ZHU
(Institute of Policy & Management, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080,China)
This paper examines the changing role and characteristics of activities geared towards the popularization of science (PS). It explores the diversity and specialization of PS activities, resulting especially from mass media development in a scientific and democratic society. As a result, the traditional notion that scientists should play a subordinate role in PS also needs to change. Based on the general communication model of mass media, this paper first provides a new communication model of the changing role of scientists in modern PS. It then distinguishes individual scientists and scientists as a group, discusses their different roles in PS and suggests a practical way for evaluating the scientists’ role in PS today.

The value of Biotechnology Applications: Public Views in China and Europe
Lan LU
Department of Social Sciences, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, China
This study contrasts public views on the values of biotechnology applications in China and Europe, investigates the differences between the two regions and explores the roots of these differences in the context of the general scientific climates in societies, media coverage, as well as values. The main finding is that biotechnology applications get more consistent acceptance and support in China than Europe. The Chinese people offer an extremely positive evaluation of usefulness and moral acceptability in connection with various applications of biotechnology; whereas the European public has deeper, wider and concreter understanding on risk. The study reveals that the public’s benefit perception might be a prerequisite in support of biotechnology applications; nevertheless, moral acceptance is the key for gaining support. Conversely, high risk perceptions may not necessarily lower support.

The applicability of Beck’s Risk Society concept to the development of civil nuclear power in China(Download)
Xiang FANG,
ISSTI PhD Student
It was reported that China would build another twenty-nine civil nuclear reactors in the next 20 years. By then the total installed capacity of nuclear power in China would rise from 9130MW to 36000 MW or even more. Nuclear power development becomes a symbol of China’s modernization. Beck’s “Risk society” concept is a warning to western modernization, which makes people in these west developed countries consider much deeper on the progress of science and technology, reflexive for what we have done to nature and environment. The applicability of this concept to civil nuclear power in China is worth examining.

Sociology of Markets – Ethnography in China’s commodity futures markets
Lucia SIU
ISSTI PhD student
Modern markets are social structures specialized in the circulation of information. The young derivatives markets of China are showing features of a hybrid structure – they are partially spanned by a network-based mode of association, meanwhile also showing properties of a rule-based, globalised “flow structure” (Knorr-Cetina 2003). Prices are the combined outcomes of human guanxi, knowledge tools (e.g. Chartism), and the power of a post-communist state.

Contextualised digital divide policy in China--'Cun Cun Tong Policy' (Download)
Shulin Chiang
ISSTI PhD Student
This paper aims to contextualise the digital divide policy in China. Drawing upon two analytical concepts - contextuality and intertextuality - it examines how China's 'development' influences interpretation of the digital divide and policy making and implementation. It concludes that given its 'development' priority, the Chinese government is making and implementing a digital divide policy 'with Chinese characteristics'.

The Shaping of Organizational Software Packages (OSPs) in the Context of China (Downloading)

Mei Wang
ISSTI PhD Student
This study examines the attempt to develop generic software solutions for complex integrated organisational software systems, with the focus on the supplier within the context of China. Drawing upon a Social Shaping of Technology (SST) perspective, an extremely detailed longitudinal and contextual analysis has been undertaken through a quantitative historical case study of the evolution of a Chinese software package within the period of 1995- 2005. The key contribution of the research is the clarification of a multi-cycle OSPs innovation process. The case-study throws light on the applicability of SST in a developing country, and on China’s future technology development policy and practices.

Social shaping perspective on pharmaceutical biotechnology：Case study on gene therapy in UK(Download)
Siguang Zhang
Visiting PhD Student,
(Institute of Policy & Management, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080,China)
The thesis sets to examine the utility of using concepts from the sociology of technology to investigate how new technologies and new concepts are co-constructed. While scientists engage to introduce pharmaceutical biotechnology into experimental clinical practice, they have to engage in a process of heterogeneous social-technical engineering. UK leads Europe both in basic research and clinical trial of the gene therapy; therefore, case study on gene therapy in UK will be a perfect example to understand why the development of gene therapy simultaneously requires a series of technical, cognitive and social changes.

The Development of SARS Vaccine in China – a reflection on public and private sector roles(Download)

Xiaobai SHEN (with Yibing DUAN , Siguang ZHANG, CAS/IPM)
Management School, the University of Edinburgh
This paper explores the growing phenomenon of public and private partnerships (PPP) in developing public goods – through a case study of the development of SARS vaccine in China. The case highlights the factors shaping this development: the specific nature of SARS vaccine as a public good – which differs from other medical products - as well as the broader social, economic and political context in China.The study points to the pivotal elements of PPP in drawing upon complementary resources for technology development - especially in a developing country like China: the complexity of motives and incentives of individual actors, the governance and organisation of the partnership, and the role of the Chinese government. The case also draws our attention to the different nature of partnerships which may have impacts on the choice of technology, the length of R&D process and long or short term effects to the society.

Researchers: Dr Mei Wang

Contact:

Keywords: Bio/Life Sciences, China, Computer Systems, Environment, Finance, Governance of S &T, Internet, Policy

ISSTI is leading the development of a Scottish Living Lab for the mobile and wireless application and service sector, together with a consortium of Scottish Universities, business and public bodies.

Researchers: Dr James Stewart; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: James Stewart

Project Website >>

Keywords: e-commerce, e-learning, ICT, Innovation, Scotland, Technology Transfer

This study showed that the eventual uses and utility of multimedia products are often far removed from supplier presumptions. Social learning is therefore crucial to how generic Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capabilities are applied and used in particular settings. In creating new multimedia products and services, diverse players are forced to collaborate: suppliers of ICTs and complementary products, media specialists and users. Certain actors (intermediaries) play a key role in maintaining such collaboration and knowledge flows. The importance of social learning is reflected in the proliferation of multimedia experiments: pilots, feasibility studies and trials, which provide a forum for resolving the uncertainties and differences surrounding the development of new multimedia products. Multimedia projects remain inherently experimental. However the importance of this innovative effort, and the knowledge it throws up, has often been overlooked. The study highlighted the various options for organising social learning, from user-centred design, to evolutionary models in which technical and market development go hand in hand, and laissez-faire approaches in which users configure standard commodified technical components to their particular purposes.

Several books were produced as a result of this research. Robin Williams, James Stewart and Roger Slack (2005) Experimenting with Information and Communication Technologies: Social Learning in Technological Innovation, Edward Elgar

Researchers: Dr James Stewart

Contact: James Stewart

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

Social studies of finance is the application to financial markets of social-science disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and social studies of science. The intrinsically multidisciplinary area is one of increasing research interest. This project aims at building a platform that helps scholars to become aware of each other across disciplines, and to enhance the sharing and exchange of resources.

Researchers: Dr Alex Preda; Prof Donald MacKenzie

Contact: Prof Donald MacKenzie

Project Website >>

Keywords: Markets, Performativity

The SIGIS project has investigated women and girls’ participation in ICT (Information and Communication Technology), in education, training, employment and in the development and consumption of technology products across five European countries. The research involved 45 detailed case studies of gender inclusion strategies by public and private sector organisations, underlining the key obstacles to and success stories in gender inclusion. The findings emerging from the case studies have been used to develop recommendations and examples of best practice aimed at both policy makers and practitioners, and others involved in the development of new inclusion efforts. The project has generated a wonderful resource on gender and ICT, covering a variety of themes, ranging from constructions of gender and gendered identities in ICT settings to the market mechanisms for inclusion. Project reports and detailed findings can be found through the SIGIS project homepage, researchers at nine universities across Europe, who together have investigated processes of innovation in multimedia. Their work has shown how the eventual uses and utility of multimedia products are often far removed from supplier presumptions, because “social learning” is crucial to how generic Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capabilities are applied and used in particular settings. More specifically,

Researchers: Dr James Stewart; Dr Lisa Lee; Dr Wendy Faulkner; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Robin Willaims

Project Website >>

Keywords: e-commerce, Gender, ICT, Media and Communications, Policy, R & D, Social Shaping of Technology, Use of Technology

This project arose out of an EPSRC/NSF sandpit, and is jointly funded by both organisations. It is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh (Jane Calvert, ISSTI and Alistair Elfick, Engineering) and Stanford University, California (Drew Endy, Bioengineering).

The project will bring together scientists and engineers working in synthetic biology with artists and designers working in the creative industries, and it will analyse the interactions that result. This could lead to new forms of engineering, new schools of art, and new approaches to societal engagement with synthetic biology.

Researchers: Dr Jane Calvert

Contact: Dr Jane Calvert

Keywords: (None)

Radical changes in the global economy expose business sectors to major threats as well as to various new opportunities. Policy makers are required to target subsequent opportunities by enabling or promoting the business sector to take advantage of them. However, existing horizontal R&D policies focused on promoting R&D activity in individual firms are often lacking in this respect.

Current and future scenarios require not only the design of new policies but also the adoption of a whole new type of policy process, namely the formulation of 'Targeted R&D' policies. Such policies go beyond market failure approach to identify strategic priorities as well as analysing system failures and imperfections impeding their successful implementation.

The aim of the TARGET project is to design and develop a structured and valorized set of guidelines & recommendations, cumulating into a toolkit, for formulating and implementing targeted R&D policies, with a focus on the life science/biomed sector. The toolkit will address issues such as: the ability to define strategic priorities, to evaluate technological gaps, to identify the elements within the national/regional innovation system responsible of achieving the selected priorities (including the missing elements), to identify potential system failures, to formulate effective policies and to reach coordination among the relevant policy makers/ministries.

A consortium consisting of 8 partners from 6 different countries is assembled to implement the project. The consortium brings together public bodies, and research institutes, whose research will provide a sound base for decision-making in science and policy. The TARGET project will stimulate a mutual learning process among the consortium partners for the identification of the proper mix between horizontal R&D policies and targeted ones.

Researchers: Dr Alessandro Rosiello

Contact: Dr Alessandro Rosiello

Keywords: (None)

This project focuses on two sets of research questions. First, what sources have been drawn on in developing technical knowledge of the properties of possible Ballistic Missile Defence BMD systems? Second, how have ‘technology’ and ‘politics’ interacted in the history of BMD?

What sources have been drawn on in developing technical knowledge of the properties of possible Ballistic Missile Defence BMD systems? How have the criteria for technical success been established, and how has it been determined whether these criteria have been or will be met? Are there distinctive social patterns in beliefs about whether they have been met? How have controversies over technical knowledge emerged? To the extent that they have been resolved, how has this occurred? To the extent that they have not been resolved, what consequences has this had for BMD’s political fate? How have ‘technology’ and ‘politics’ interacted in the history of BMD? What has happened to technical knowledge as it passes into the political domain? Have political decisions set technical priorities? Has the advance of technology shaped those decisions? These issues will be addressed through an over-arching history of BMD technology, with particular emphasis on detailed accounts of episodes of special interest.

Researchers: Dr Graham Spinardi; Prof Donald MacKenzie

Contact: Dr Graham Spinardi

Keywords: (None)

Three year project funded under the Economic & Social Research Council (2004-2007) This is a comparative study of the development and use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software packages and how they are evolving as they are adapted for use in new organisational contexts. Working across an interdisciplinary team, we are conducting ethnographic research in both supplier and user settings.

Researchers: Dr Luciana D'Adderio; Dr Mei Wang; Dr Neil Pollock; Ms Christine Grimm; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Neil Pollock

Project Website >>

Keywords: Computer Systems, e-commerce, ICT, Innovation, Markets, Performativity

In this Project Ivan Crozier (Science Studies) maps the emergence of the field of sexology, a field that constructed knowledge about sexual behaviour, and its relationship to changing popular beliefs about sexuality that were held in the late nineteenth century (both by the general public, and in court).

Researchers: Dr Ivan Crozier

Contact: Ivan Crozier

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

This project has two aims: first, to explore the views of a wide range of publics and experts in Scotland and, second, to develop engagement methods for establishing a dialogue between different groups.

This is a collaborative project with Public Health Sciences & CRFR, Science Studies Unit and the Institute for Stem Cell Research.

Researchers: Dr Jessica Gunson; Dr Sarah Parry; Dr Wendy Faulkner

Contact: Dr Sarah Parry

Keywords: (None)

Meetings are now less constrained to offices, shops and fixed points of service, and can take place in a range of environments, including branded places: coffee houses, transportation hubs, customised meeting places, and informal, locally-branded spaces. People are drawn to places that have particular meanings as loci of human encounter. Communications technologies are implicated in this move into the variegated brandscape. We gather evidence for these assertions about the rise of branded meeting places, examine the suitability of branded spaces for human encounters (eg meetings amongst business associates, between service providers and clients), and develop strategies for improving the technologies that support them. In the process we will critically examine and analyse branded spaces, theories about their formation, and how they operate as loci of human encounter. Key Research Team Richard Coyne Architecture: School of Arts, Culture and Environment Robin Williams Research Centre for Social Sciences James Stewart Research Centre for Social Sciences Mark Wright Division of Informatics Funded by AHRC/EPSRC

Researchers: Dr James Stewart; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Richard Coyne

Project Website >>

Keywords: Design, Domestication, ICT, Media and Communications, Telecommunications

This consultancy project with RIN for RCUK collected data from leading stakeholders and participants in the development of the UK e-Infrastructure

Researchers: Dr James Stewart; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: James Stewart

Keywords: (None)

Satisfying the growing demand for improved coordination and cooperation between healthcare providers presents a major challenge for healthcare planners. The NHS strategic programme Information for Health sets out to meet this challenge through the adoption of an electronic health record (EHR). The patchy success record of past electronic medical record projects, however, makes it clear that the problems the EHR faces are numerous and often complex. The aim of this 3 year multi-site project is to understand and develop solutions to these problems. In particular, we will examine the fundamental assumptions surrounding the EHR and devise more organisationally appropriate and practical strategies and tools for its design and deployment.This work is funded by the EPSRC.

Researchers: Dr Ian Graham; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: September 2002 to August 2005

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

ISSTI has secured a £150K contract from British Library, Research Information Network to undertake a series of Case Studies in Life Sciences: Understanding Researchers' Information Needs and Uses.

Robin Williams leads the study team which includes Joyce Tait, Jane Calvert, Ann Bruce, and Wendy Marsden from the ESRC Innogen Centre in collaboration with colleagues from the Digital Curation Centre (Graham Pryor, Martin Donnelly and Colin Neilson) and Information Services at the University of Edinburgh (Marshall Dozier).

These studies will throw light upon how researchers locate, evaluate, organise, manage, transform and communicate information sources in the course of research process, with a view to identifying how information-related policy, strategy and practice might be improved to meet the needs of researchers.

Researchers: Dr Jane Calvert; Dr Wendy Marsden; Mrs Ann Bruce; Prof Joyce Tait; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Robin Williams

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)

Funded by the Research Information Network (www.rin.ac.uk), the aim of this project is to investigate the extent to which Web 2.0 tools represent useful means of communicating, sharing and disseminating research ideas and outputs for researchers across different disciplines, with a view to exploring implications for the future of scholarly communications.

The study is aimed at:

(i) Informing researchers, institutions and funders on the effectiveness of these new resources as means of communicating, sharing and disseminating research ideas and outputs
(ii) Advising research institutions and funders about the possible implications of the use of these resources for the recognition and reward of research outputs
(iii) Providing librarians, information professionals and publishers with a view about how they might develop their roles in the scholarly communications process in order to complement the evolution of new means of sharing information in research communities.

Research Questions

To what extent are Web 2.0 tools are being adopted as a scholarly tool in different institutions and departments across the UK, in different subject fields and disciplines, and at different stages of the scholarly communications process?

-Which tools are being used, for what scholarly purposes and to what degree?
-What are the demographic characteristics of researchers who use these tools?
-What factors influence researchers to adopt and use Web 2.0 tools?
-Are there specific skills and training needs relevant to the adoption of Web 2.0 resources by researchers?
-Is there evidence that Web 2.0 tools are changing researchers' behaviour in significant ways?
-How do perceptions about quality, scholarly merit or permanence of content affect researchers' use of Web 2.0?
-Is there evidence of impact on perceptions and practices of how research can be peer reviewed?
-What are the ethical and legal implications of disseminating information via Web 2.0, with regard to ownership of information, etc?
-What is the relationship between Web 2.0 resources and established search and discovery services?

Methodology
We are using a composite methodology consisting of three main components: a quantitative survey to acquire the demographic characteristics of the researchers who use Web 2.0 tools and statistics of adoption rates across UK academia, interviews with users and non-users, and case studies of selected Web 2.0 tools with further interviews to investigate adoption issues in more depth within particular user communities.

Project Partners

National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS), University of Manchester (www.ncess.ac.uk)
Institute for the Study of Science, Technology & Innovation (ISSTI), University of Edinburgh (www.issti.ed.ac.uk)

Principal investigator: Rob Procter, NCeSS
Co-Investigator: Robin Williams, ISSTI

Researchers: Dr Rob Procter; Prof Robin Williams

Contact: Rob Procter

Project Website >>

Keywords: (None)