Organization of the PhilInBioMed Network – old

The PhilInBioMed International Network is structured around three entities, the Members, the Steering Committee and the Scientific Committee. The members are at the heart of PhilInBioMeds activities. They collaborate on various subjects, exchange ideas and once a year they come together at the PhilInBioMed Network Meeting.

The Steering Committee

The Steering Committee is composed of 12 members, one from each of the founding institutions. It treats topics that pertain to the organizational structure or the general management of the network. Questions that might be addressed by the Steering Committee include the admission of new member institutions, the time and location of the next PhilInBioMed Network Meeting or the exchange of students and staff between the different member institutions.

The members of the Steering Committee are:

The Scientific Committee

The Scientific Committee has an advisory role to the network. Its members are either philosophers who are interested in science and publish in science journals or scientists who publish in philosophy journals or have co-authored papers with philosophers.

The members of this committee accept:

i) to promote interactions between philosophy, biology, and medicine in their own research environment;

ii) to be occasionally solicited as referees for a limited number of abstract submissions for PhilInBioMed conferences or workshops

The members of the Scientific Committee are:

Ralph Adolphs is a Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology at the California Institute of Technology. Furthermore he is the Director of the Emotion and Social Cognition Lab, which investigates the neural underpinnings of human social behavior.

Catherine Belzung is Professor in Neuroscience at University of Tours and at Institut Universitaire de France, and Director of Imaging and Brain (iBrain, Inserm Unit 1253).

Alexander Bird is Peter Sowerby Professor of Philosophy and Medicine at King’s College (London, UK). His research deals with philosophy of science, metaphysics and epistemology, with a particular interest in the philosophy of medicine.

Mina Bissell is Distinguished Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She has pioneered the field of tumor microenviornment and she has been recognized for her lifetime contributions to the fields of breast cancer research and the nucleus environment to gene expression in normal and malignant tissues.

Carl Craver is a Philosopher of Neuroscience at the Washington University in St. Louis, USA. He studies deficits in agency and moral reasoning in people with amnesia. Other research interests include the nature of scientific explanation, and the norms of progress for experimental instruments and techniques.

Richard Creath is a philosopher of science primarily interested in what makes one scientific claim more worth believing than another. He is President’s Professor at the School of Life Science at the Arizona State University.

Ford Doolittle is a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of the Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. His research examines prevailing concepts in genomics, molecular biology and microbial ecology, with regards to the understanding of evolution by natural selection.

Stuart Firestein is the Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biological Sciences where his colleagues and he study the vertebrate olfactory system. Dedicated to promoting the accessibility of science to a public audience he has written Ignorance: How it Drives Science.

Eugene Koonin is a Senior Investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information and head of the Evolutionary Genomics Research Group.

Kevin Laland is Professor of Behavioural and Evolutionary Biology at the University of St Andrews. The Laland lab studies evolution and animal behaviour with a focus on animal social learning, niche construction and the evolution of human cognition.

Deborah Mayo is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Virginia Tech. She is the author of Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge, which won the 1998 Lakatos Prize. Her research topics include underdetermination, the role of novel evidence, and the nature of scientific progress.

Margaret McFall-Ngai is Professor and Director of the Pacific Biosciences Research Center at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Her research focuses on host responses to interactions with beneficial microbes.

Samir Okasha is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bristol (UK). He is a specialist of foundational and conceptual questions surrounding evolutionary theory.

Duygu Özpolat is a Principal Investigator and Hibbitt Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, USA. As a developmental biologist she holds a passion for live-imaging embryos and regeneration.

Diane Pataki is Professor of Biological Sciences and Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Utah. She studies human-environment interactions related to urban biodiversity, resource use, and landscape design.

Kenneth F. Schaffner is Distinguished University Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He is a specialist of philosophy of biology and philosophy of medicine.

Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA. He is one of the founders of the field of philosophy of biology, and a specialist of evolution.

Miriam Solomon is Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair in the Department of Philosophy at Temple University. She is also an Affiliated Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and an Affiliated Professor in the Center for Bioethics, Urban Health, and Policy (Temple University School of Medicine).

Joan Strassmann is a Professor of Biology at the Washington University in St. Louis, USA. She is an Evolutionary Biologist interested in cooperative alliances, multicellularity and social evolution.

Michel Vervoort is a Professor in Biology (Evolution, Genetics, Eco-Devo) at Paris-Diderot University and Institut Jacques Monod, and co-leader of the team “Evolution and Development of Metazoans”, Paris, France.