Alumni Association
Dr Judi Sture (Bradford University)
15 November 2011
Joint Seminar
Seminar title: Dual-use bioethics at university-level: education at university-level for individual life scientists through to nation states
Japanese Lead Scientist: Professor Tsutomu Takeuchi, School of Medicine, Keio University
UK Counterpart: Dr Judi Sture, Head of the Graduate School, Bradford University
Seminar Period: 2 days in July 2010 and 2 days in January 2011
The University of Bradford and Keio University in Tokyo applied to the ESRC and to the JSPS under a scheme seeking UK and Japanese collaborations on scientific topics. The ESRC supplied £15,500 to cover the UK meeting.
A two-day international seminar was hosted by the University of Bradford in July 2010. Dual Use Education For Life Scientists: Mapping The Current Global Landscape and Developments provided a forum for a range of experts to meet, share and discuss advances in the emerging debate on the biosecurity education of life scientists. Around 35 invited biosecurity experts, scientists, educators, delegates from the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and researchers from a range of institutions and government bodies presented work at the seminar, focussing on practical, ground-level advances and challenges in biosecurity education in the UK, western and eastern Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and North Africa, Scandinavia and North America.
The meeting at Keio University, Tokyo, in January 2011, focused on Biosecurity, the Dual-Use Dilemma and Education for Life Scientists, and took a more policy-led approach to the topic. Speakers from the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the International Council for the Life Sciences and a number of other research institutions all discussed top-down activities at national and international levels that are supporting advances in biotechnology with security-related cooperation.
Outcomes from both events have been noted at individual, institutional and international levels. We have since spoken alongside the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense at the Science Council of Japan’s meeting in August 2011 at which the SCJ recognised the need to develop a biosecurity approach to science education for Japanese scientists. This meeting was also sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Further, our work has been reported in a number of international publications and has been highlighted in at least two Working Papers to the 7th Review Conference of the BTWC in December 2011; we will be presenting our work again at this meeting in Geneva. We have not yet applied for further funding from the JSPS but will consider doing so.
Dualuse Seminar July 2010
PDF version (84KB)
