One-day research conference considers the interconnectedness of human and environmental health as well as that of global communities and brings new insights to biosciences research.
On a Friday in August, QB3-Berkeley hosted the Bioscience Meeting “Algorithms, Detection, and the ‘One Health’ Approach” at Stanley Hall on UC Berkeley’s campus.
Organized by UC Berkeley bioengineering postdoc Dr. Caitlin Cornell and doctoral student Lena Blackmon, this symposium aimed to bring together a diverse set of attendees including scientists, technical professionals, community organizers, and social advocacy groups to “foster discussions on the scientific, environmental, and social implications of these technologies and expand participants’ interdisciplinary networks…with the goal of promoting equitable human and environmental health on both local and global scales.”
As a biology researcher from an interdisciplinary background—from working on development economics and global health to computational genomics—I was particularly excited to attend this symposium.
Global health perspectives
In the first session, Achal Prabhala, a writer, researcher, and activist, discussed global challenges in achieving equitable access to health technologies, highlighting the example of HIV drugs and Covid vaccines. During the HIV/AIDS pandemic, activists in the United States, including the group ACT UP, pushed the government to invest in research and development in creating treatments. However, pharmaceutical companies subsequently acquired intellectual property rights on the drugs, and it took South Africa eight years—and millions of deaths—to win the right to use generic drugs and establish a public program for treating infected South Africans.
Similar unequal access to health technology has persisted, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, where countries like South Africa experienced excess mortality due to lack of or delay in vaccine access. Even though mRNA vaccines are easier to manufacture compared to traditional vaccines, regulatory approval remains a barrier, as there is no established way to verify the equivalence between mRNA molecules, and hence the US FDA requires either licensing by an existing company owning the manufacturing technology (e.g. Moderna) or separate clinical trials for mRNA vaccines to be approved. This challenge also lays out a path for biology research to contribute to equitable global access to mRNA vaccines.
In the second session, Dr. Rana Dajani shared her reflections from decades of work in global health. She highlighted the importance of using culturally sensitive methods to study topics in population health, illustrating with her own work using fuzzy cognitive mapping to better capture outcomes like resilience and female empowerment in non-Western populations.
Dajani also proposed, based on her work on the epigenetics of trauma, a new paradigm for trauma beyond that of the “victim” or the “hero:” our responses to trauma through epigenetics, or turning on and off certain genes, showcases our flexibility and adaptability. She talked about the challenges of being an outspoken academic and gave advice to those of us who would like to continue engaging with fellow scientists on political issues: build trust, don’t give up, and don’t underestimate your influence.
Bringing science to communities and community engagement to science
In the third session, Dr. Kavita Philip discussed the history of the political engagements of scientists in the US and UK, as well as her vision for carrying this tradition forward. In recent decades, there has been a tendency for scientists to focus exclusively on their research rather than political or social engagement.
Philip argued that scientists today face vast possibilities in resuming this earlier tradition by drawing lessons from and collaborating with struggles in Indigenous, Black, Dalit, Queer, Feminist and Global South contexts.
In a parallel session, Dr. Nick Pokorzynzki, a researcher at Yale University, and Katy Slininger, a tenant organizer in Connecticut, discussed their work with the New Haven chapter of the organization “Science for the People” (SftP) using data science to help local tenants organize against unsafe living conditions.
The Lofts at Cargill Falls Mill in Putnam, CT is operated by a private company to fulfill local affordable housing mandates. In 2022, it was discovered that multiple units in the building including those with young children had hazardous levels of defective lead paint or lead dust. The landlord refused to address the issue despite persistent protests by tenants.
SftP members compiled data on tenants from different sources (demographic information, involvement with tenant organizing, lead testing data etc.). This helped identify high priority apartments for organizing, and eventually the organizing efforts caused the state General Attorney to investigate the landlord and the EPA to intervene in the lead abatement process.
In an afternoon session, Dr. Mara Freilich and Dr. Jessica Ng talked about participatory climate futures and community engagement with climate science. Ng prompted us to think about a path of clean energy transition without mineral extractions, with a focus on alternative solutions including changing infrastructures. Freilich gave an example of community-driven science: the Salton Sea Environmental Timeseries project, where the research questions were shaped by community needs, and community members participated in data collection. They also encouraged us to think about ethical issues in our own fields and discuss them with one another.
In the last session of the afternoon, Dr. Noha Aboelata, who founded Roots Community Health in Oakland, and Dr. Kim Rhoads, an epidemiologist at UCSF who founded Umoja Health, discussed the role of community and advocacy in the Covid-19 pandemic.
Developing technologies beneficial to all
An afternoon panel featured doctoral students Abdul Bhuiya, Zaina Moussa, Maria Diaz de Leon Derby, and Jack Fox Keen. The panel centered on the “One Health” approach, which stresses the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health. Bhuiya, Moussa, and Diaz de Leon Derby are from the Fletcher lab at UC Berkeley which works on providing technical solutions to global health problems.
The panelists discussed their research in wastewater surveillance for pathogen detection and developing tests for neglected tropical diseases which are tailored to local conditions in terms of speed, cost, material availability, etc. Keen, from the AIEA lab at UC Santa Cruz, discussed the importance of developing AI solutions that are not only accurate but also explainable and accountable, as well as their research on applications in mental health.
In an afternoon workshop, Gabriel Woolls, UC Berkeley physics doctoral student, and Mark Dudley, an organizer with No Tech for Apartheid and a former Google employee, served on a panel discussing their work organizing academic researchers and tech employees towards recognizing the ethics of their working conditions and outputs.
While it is not always easy to invite researchers to think critically of the implications of where their funding comes from or what they work on, these organizers emphasized the importance of building relationships with coworkers and the persistence of organizing efforts to help people see the interconnectedness of our struggles.
Personally, I really appreciated hearing from the different speakers. As a researcher in computational biology, I do not have many occasions to reflect on the historical context, social, and ethical implications of my work or hear about perspectives from other disciplines.
Furthermore, being in academia, I haven’t always had the chance to engage with communities that my research may serve or see models of what that could look like. Therefore, I found the symposium very enlightening and thought-provoking. I am inspired to examine the social and ethical aspects of my own work and to help shape future research directions.
Sindy Li is a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Nilah Ioannidis on computational genomics, particularly the interpretation of protein-coding variants. She came from an interdisciplinary background with a PhD in economics and work experience in international development.