Projects
Below is a list of all current and future projects at the Center for Contemporary History and Policy.
Past projects of the Center for Contemporary History and Policy include Biotechnology Clusters, Inventing the Digital Age, Low-Dose Toxicity, the Moore Foundation Project, New Chemical Bodies, Pharmaceutical Risk and Regulation, and R&D Meets M&A.
The main aim of this project is to establish a consortium of nationally recognized research and educational institutions to advance scholarship on the history of biotechnology.
The C3 project addresses the need for better quantitative information about environmental conditions in Philadelphia-area communities by forming and facilitating research collaborations between chemist volunteers and community groups.
How can science be mobilized for better decision making? And how can values, an integral part of the decision-making process, be made more explicit and transparent?
The project examines how communities in the Philadelphia region face unique environmental challenges and aims to address this issue as it pertains to public and environmental health assessment in selected Philadelphia neighborhoods.
What do complex ‘gene-environment’ interactions mean for biomedicine, biopharma, and public health today? Exploring this question through the case of asthma.
This project aims to illuminate the diverse contributions of materials innovation within the broader process of technological development in the contemporary age.
On Innovation Day young innovators and industry leaders come together to celebrate innovation in the chemical industry today and seek solutions for tomorrow’s challenges.
This book project examines the development of the semiconductor industry in the United States and Japan.
In collaboration with colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, this project examines the history of institutionalized materials science in American universities during the height of the cold war.
This oral history project looks more closely at the role that military medicine plays in the construction and reconstruction of soldiers during and after war.
This proposed oral history project will highlight the contributions and experiences of self-identified minorities working in the area of biomedical sciences and biotechnology.
Based on the archival documents and oral history interviews we have collected during the last three years, we have begun to prepare a full-length biography of the Silicon Valley pioneer Gordon Moore.
This project explores the emerging relationship between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and nanoscience and technology, from the involvement of the agency in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), to its support for internal and extramural research of nano-based environmental science.
This project aims to place the global development of nanotechnology within the transnational context of the United States and leading East Asian countries, such as Japan, China, and South Korea.
This project explores the emerging relationship between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and nanoscience and technology, from the involvement of the agency in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), to its support for internal and extramural research of nano-based environmental science.
The Orphan Drug Act (ODA) was passed in the early 1980s to create opportunities for therapeutic R&D often for life threatening conditions that through their rarity, would likely not have had a chance.
The PGM Initiative’s broad goal is to provide its diverse stakeholders with a deeper understanding of the (potential) implications of PGM for a variety of communities and individuals through three approaches: research, oral histories, and conferences.
This project encompasses the state of sustainability reporting standards and metrics among chemical, petroleum, and pharmaceutical companies.
In this oral history project we conduct in-depth interviews with individuals involved in the process of writing and negotiating the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA): we gain their perspective on the law, what it has done, and whether or not it can continue to work in the 21st century.
The project consists of a comprehensive oral history of the 20 signatories of the 1991 Wingspread Consensus Statement to reflect on how this field came into existence, the role the conference played in galvanizing the group’s identity, and the direction research has taken since.
This oral history project aims to collect interviews with women who received chemistry degrees in the post-Title IX era. We plan to use the materials in this collection to develop educational materials for young women interested in pursuing chemistry as a field of study.