Jodi Halpern joins Stuart Russell as Co-Director
We are excited to announce that Professor Jodi Halpern has been appointed as the new Co-Director of the UC Berkeley Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public, effective immediately.
Halpern, a co-founder of the Kavli Center and an active member of the Steering Committee, has played a pivotal role in the center's development, including integrating the work of the Berkeley Ethics and Regulation Group for Innovative Technologies with our fellowship program. She holds a University Chair and is a Professor of Bioethics at UC Berkeley. Her interdisciplinary research combines psychiatry, philosophy, and affective forecasting to explore the societal impacts of innovative technologies.
In her new role, Halpern will join Stuart Russell, a computer scientist and the inaugural Faculty Director, as the two joint faculty heads of the Center. This partnership reflects the Center's deep commitment to bridging the disciplines and fostering dialogue between scientists and humanities scholars.
Russell shared, “Jodi Halpern embodies in a single person the multidisciplinary spirit of the Kavli Center. She has a long history of working across boundaries to solve ethical problems and has been central to the success of our Fellows program. I look forward to working with her to achieve the Center's mission.”
Halpern will help grow the center and provide guidance and thought partnership in building key areas of the center and in ongoing core programs such as our flagship Ethics, Science, and the Public Fellows Program. Her leadership in empathic curiosity will enhance our training efforts to foster understanding across disciplines and between academics, researchers, and the public.
"I am honored to co-direct The Kavli Center with Stuart Russell,” said Halpern. “Our work in navigating the ethical complexities of modern science and technology is more crucial now than ever. Seeing our fellows develop cross-disciplinary thinking and embody this mission has been truly inspiring, and I'm so excited to help grow a generation of leaders who can help discovery science best serve the public interest.”
At the UC Berkeley Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public, our mission is to break down barriers separating the sciences, humanities, and the public, creating an inclusive, multi-disciplinary framework for understanding the ethical implications of science and technology, training the next generation, and ensuring scientific advances serve fundamental human interests.
We are thrilled to have Dr. Halpern step into this leadership role and look forward to her continued contributions to advancing the mission of The Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public.
