Café Synthetique is the monthly meetup for the Cambridge synthetic biology community with informal talks, discussion and pub snacks.
Special Cafe Synthetique! Please note unusual date and time.
USING SCIENCE TO INFORM POLICY IN THE U.S.
Rocco Casagrande, former United Nations biological weapons inspector, is a founder and current Managing Director of Gryphon Scientific.
In this talk, Dr. Casagrande will discuss challenges in science policy faced by the US government over the past decade and his role in using quantitative methods grounded in the life sciences to ensure that the government is making decisions based on the best available evidence. Issues to be discussed include design features on a laboratory that studies the most dangerous animal pathogens, the regulation of the tools of biotechnology to minimise risk of misuse without hampering scientific advancement, and the balancing of risks and rewards on research on human pathogens with pandemic potential
BIO
Dr Casagrande holds a BA in chemistry and biology from Cornell University and a PhD in experimental biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From December 2002 to March 2003, Rocco worked as a United Nations biological weapons inspector in Iraq, where he participated in more than 50 inspections and acted as the chief of the U.N. biological analysis laboratory. In a prior post, Rocco led a team of biologists and engineers at Surface Logix, a Boston-based biotechnology firm, to develop and test real-time detectors for biological agents. In his most recent position, he led the homeland security practice at Abt Associates, one of the nation’s largest public policy research and consulting firms. He has published numerous articles on biological defense and has consulted on chemical and biological warfare and defense for several congressional offices and government agencies.
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Café Synthetique is the monthly meetup for the Cambridge synthetic biology community with informal talks, discussion and pub snacks. It is kindly sponsored by Cambridge Consultants.