About PSPDG

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Mission

The Mission of PSPDG is to educate the Penn community on the relationship between science and society. We explore the ethical, legal, and regulatory issues that arise from scientific and technical progress and we advocate for science-informed policymaking, communication of science to the public, and the continued support of research.


History

PSPDG formed in 2017 as both the Penn Science Policy Group (PSPG)  and the Penn Science Diplomacy Group (PSDG) merged to form one group. PSPG was founded in 2013 by a group of dedicated graduate students and post-docs, led by Michael Allegrezza, and PSDG was founded in 2015 by a group of students, led by Enrique Lin Shiao.

PSPDG holds regular meetings and hosts speakers to discuss issues and careers in science policy and diplomacy. Our group consists of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows primarily with biomedical research and engineering backgrounds but we are open to the entire graduate and post-graduate community at Penn and Philadelphia.

Contact Us
Interested in joining PSPG? Want to write a piece for our blog?
Email penn.science.policy@gmail.com  or check us out on Facebook. 

Popular posts from this blog

2015 AAAS Science and Technology Policy Forum Summary

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I recently had the opportunity to attend the 2015 AAAS Science and Technology Policy Forum in Washington, D.C. This annual meeting brings together a range of academics and professionals to discuss the broad S&T policy landscape. Below are some of my takeaways from the meeting. I hope to have additional comments from other National Science Policy Group members up soon. By Chris Yarosh The talks and panels at the Forum encompassed a huge range of topics from the federal budget and the appropriations outlook to manufacturing policy and, of course, shrimp treadmills . My opinion of the uniting themes tying this gamut together is just that—my opinion— and should only be taken as such. That being said, the threads I picked on in many of the talks can be summarized by three C’s: cooperation, communication, and citizenship . First up, cooperation. Although sequestration’s most jarring impacts have faded, AAAS’s budget guru Matthew Hourihan warns that fiscal year 2016 could
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AAAS Forum Take #2

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Another point of view of the AAAS Forum by Matthew Facciani: I have provided scientific testimony and met with some of my local legislators, but I’ve never had any formal exposure to science policy. I was really excited to hear about the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Forum to learn more about how scientists can impact policy. The information I absorbed at the conference was overwhelming, but incredibly stimulating. Some of the lectures discussed the budget cuts and the depressing barriers for achieving science policy. However, I felt there was definitely an atmosphere of optimism at the conference and it was focused on how we can create positive change. One of my favorite aspects of the conference were the discussions of how to effectively communicate science to non-scientists. Before we can even have discussions of funding, the general public needs to understand how science works and why basic science is so important. For example, science never proves anything with 100%
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Dr. Sarah Cavanaugh discusses biomedical research in her talk, "Homo sapiens: the ideal animal model"

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Biology and preclinical medicine rely heavily upon research in animal models such as rodents, dogs, and chimps. But how translatable are the findings from these animal models to humans? And what alternative systems are being developed to provide more applicable results while reducing the number of research animals? Image courtesy of PCRM Last Thursday, PSPG invited Dr. Sarah Cavanaugh from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to discuss these issues. In her talk entitled, “ Homo sapiens : the ideal animal model,” she emphasized that we are not particularly good at translating results from animal models into human patients. Data from the FDA says that 90% of drugs that perform well in animal studies fail when tested in clinical trials.  It may seem obvious, but it is important to point out that the biology of mice is not identical to human biology. Scientific publications have demonstrated important dissimilarities in regards to the pathology of inflammation , d
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