Professor Nicholas A. Ashford Nicholas A. Ashford

Professor Nicholas A. Ashford
Director of the Technology and Law Program at MIT

Nicholas A. Ashford is Professor of Technology and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses in Environmental Law and Policy; Technology, Law and Public Policy; and Sustainability, Trade and Environment. Dr. Ashford is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development in the School of Engineering; the Institute for Work and Employment Research in the Sloan School of Management; and the Environmental Policy Group in the Urban Studies Department. He holds both a Ph.D. in Chemistry and a Law Degree from the University of Chicago, where he also received graduate education in Economics. Dr. Ashford also holds an adjunct faculty position at the Harvard University School of Public Health.

Dr. Ashford is the author of a major policy work for the Ford Foundation, Crisis in the Workplace: Occupational Disease and Injury, (1976, MIT Press). He co-authored five additional books:Environmental Law, Policy and Economics (2008) ; Public Participation in Contaminated Communities (2001); Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes (second edition 1998, John Wiley Press); Technology, Law and the Working Environment (second edition 1996, Island Press) and Monitoring the Worker for Exposure and Disease (1990, John Hopkins University Press). He was a public member and chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety & Health, served on the EPA Science Advisory Board, and was chairman of the Committee on Technology Innovation & Economics of the EPA National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology. Dr. Ashford is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and 2003 chair of its Section on Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering. He has served as an advisor to the United Nations Environment Programme and is also legislation, regulation, and policy editor of the Journal of Cleaner Production. He currently serves as co-chair of the US-Greece Council for the Initiative on Technology Cooperation with the Balkans.

Dr. Ashford's research interests include regulatory law and economics; the design of government policies for encouraging both technological innovation, and improvements in health, safety and environmental quality; pollution prevention and cleaner/inherently safer production; the effects of liability in improving product and process safety; the consequences of low-level exposure to chemicals; sustainability, trade and environment; labor's participation in technological change; and environmental justice. He has developed methodologies for decision-making in the regulation of chemicals and has extensively investigated the effects of regulation on technological innovation in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and automobile industries. Dr. Ashford's research activities include work for the United Nations Environment Programme, the OECD, and the European Union, as well as for U.S. regulatory agencies and the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment.

You can reach Professor Ashford at by email at nashford@mit.edu; telephone at 617.253.1664; or fax at 617-452-2265. Technology and Law Program, Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development, MIT E40-239, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Technology and Law Program

A program of the
Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development

MIT E40-227, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307
617.253.1664, fax 617.253.7140
ctpidcom@mit.edu

Last modified: 6/22/08