About the Center
The Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public at UC Berkeley builds an interdisciplinary community to understand and navigate the ethical and societal implications of scientific advances.
We connect scientists with scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and professional fields, focusing on artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and genomics and genome editing. At the heart of our work is a graduate and postdoctoral Fellowship that combines sustained dialogue, ethical inquiry, public engagement, and opportunities to collaborate and put ideas into practice.
How we work
Convene & Engage
Bring people together across disciplines and create opportunities to connect with public perspectives, partners, and policymakers through our projects and collaborations.
Model & Practice
Build a community where ethical reflection and interdisciplinary collaboration are part of how research is done. Develop and test these practices through shared inquiry and projects.
Train & Support
Help the next generation of scientists and scholars develop the knowledge, skills, relationships, and commitment to address ethical and societal questions throughout their careers.
Research & Influence
Generate scholarship, public programs, and contributions to science governance that help scientific advances remain answerable to fundamental human interests.
Our Scientific Focus Areas
The Center’s current focus on AI, neuroscience, and genomics and genome editing reflects both the profound ethical and societal questions these fields raise and the backgrounds of our scientific founders. Their basic research led to transformative discoveries and showed how advances in these fields can raise important questions for society. Founding faculty member and Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, who has pioneered research on CRISPR gene editing, explains:
"After our 2012 paper revolutionized scientific research and CRISPR became global headline news, I had to quickly learn how to toggle between two responsibilities: academic teaching and research to further develop the technology, and a new role engaging with journalists, politicians, and lawmakers to publicly discuss how we as a society can safely apply breakthrough gene editing technology, including the risks of making heritable changes in the human germline. It would have been immensely helpful to have had a central resource to help me as a scientist — and as a concerned citizen — navigate the complex ethical implications of our work." – Jennifer Doudna, October 2020
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