HOUSTON — (Jan. 10, 2024) — Rice University’s biennial De Lange Conference will address the future of biology, technology and climate change through a series of lively interventions and debates Feb. 9-10 at the university’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Themed “Brave New Worlds: Who Decides? Research, Risk and Responsibility,” the conference will explore provocative questions regarding synthetic biology, computer and data surveillance technologies and how to govern the ever-impending climate crisis, conference organizers said.
Endowed by Hank and Demaris Hudspeth to provide a forum for issues of great concern to society, the De Lange Conference is an initiative of Rice’s Scientia Institute, a faculty-led consortium that promotes multidisciplinary engagement to benefit the university and the Houston community at large. The event is chaired this year by Luis Campos, Baker College Chair for the History of Science, Technology and Innovation and a faculty scholar at the Baker Institute.
“We wanted to have a broad topic that would connect a lot of different disciplines and parts of campus,” Campos said. “Synthetic biology, the uses of data, climate change—whatever our field, job or profession, we have all heard of these things, and we all want to know more about them. So we’re bringing in scholars, scientists and artists to think about how these frontiers of scientific innovation and research relate to larger social contexts.
“Everybody is concerned with the future of their health, the future of their society, the future of the climate that they live in and the future of how their data is being used. This is a conference that weaves all those realms together with forms of artistic intervention and creative practice.”
This year’s conference comes as the 50th anniversary of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA approaches. The Asilomar meeting was an influential conference organized by Paul Berg, Maxine Singer and colleagues to discuss the potential biohazards and regulation of biotechnology, held in February 1975 at a conference center at Asilomar State Beach, California.
“Now that we’re approaching this 50th anniversary, we realize that there’s lots of ways that meeting and those questions are perennial, even if the technologies are constantly changing and evolving,” Campos said. “And these are questions not just in the shadow of the atomic bomb, as it was for those folks in 1975 — these are questions at the forefront of contemporary biological engineering, questions in the world of computers and data and questions about climate change and governance. So we wanted to take those three big-picture areas and explore who decides what these brave new worlds look like.”
The conference includes a stacked roster of scientists, researchers, scholars and artists.
The first day will kick off with a poetic invocation from poet Savannah Cooper-Ramsey, titled “Brave New Words.”
The opening day will also feature the Civic Scientist Keynote Address from Nobel laureate Frances Arnold, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. Her presentation is titled “The Potential Impacts of Directing Evolution.”
Day 2 will include vivid artistic interventions from renowned artist and MacArthur fellow Trevor Paglen as well as Jiabao Li, artist, technologist and assistant professor of design at the University of Texas at Austin. A lunchtime keynote will also be given by Mari Margil, executive director for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, on transformative efforts to recognize the legal rights of nature.
The second day ends with a bang as Rice Cinema will present shorts from the BIO·FICTION Science Art Film Festival. Rice professors Robert Howell, Kirsten Ostherr and Elizabeth Petrick will serve as panelists to discuss the short films.
There will also be two preconference launch events, with a lecture by Jim Endersby at Fondren Library Jan. 23 and a film screening Jan. 24 titled “Make People Better” on the frontiers of tech ethics involving “CRISPR babies.” The film will feature a discussion with Samira Kiani, producer and genetic engineer, and Howell, Rice’s chair of philosophy.
The event is free, but registration is required.
For a complete schedule of events and speakers, visit https://delange.rice.edu/schedule.