FACULTY | Kenneth Oye
Biography
Kenneth Oye holds a joint appointment in Political Science and Engineering Systems and directs the Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET). He is currently a faculty PI in the NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center; an Advisory Board Member for the International Risk Governance Council of Geneva and EU iNTeg-Risk. He has been a consultant on trade and financial issues for U.S. Treasury, Commerce, and EX-IM and the Institute for International Economics; on technology transfer for the UN; and on Asian energy and environmental issues for PNC and NEDO. Before coming to MIT, he served on the faculties of the Kennedy School at Harvard, the University of California, Princeton and Swarthmore and was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from Swarthmore with Highest Honors and a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard with the Chase Dissertation Prize.
Research
His current research applies theories and methods from the field of political economy to problems of science and technology policy, with emphasis on appraising market and nonmarket institutions and processes in light of pervasive uncertainty over appraisals of risks, benefits, and interests. His work treats: (1) adaptive regulation, with reference to environmental, health and safety in partnership with Netherlands PBL and to pharmaceuticals licensing in partnership with the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation; (2) policy issues associated with synthetic biology, with emphasis on IPR and risk management, in partnership with NSF SynBERC and the Smithsonian Wilson Center; (3) viability of compensation to rectify distributional consequences of reforms in areas including water and energy pricing, NIMBY problems, and economic sanctions; and (4) evaluation of scientific and technical claims in areas marked by uncertainty, complexity and controversy.
Recent Publications
"Planned Adaptation in Risk Regulation: An Initial Survey of U.S. Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulation," Lawrence McCray, Kenneth A. Oye and Arthur C. Petersen, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, forthcoming 2010, 9 pp.
"Research in Engineering Design: The Role of Mathematical Theory and Empirical Evidence," Research in Engineering Design, Daniel D. Frey, Paulien Herder, Ype Wijnia, Eswaran Subrahmanian, Konstantinos Katsikopoulos, Don Clausing, Richard de Neufville, Kenneth A. Oye, and Edward Greitz forthcoming 2010, 10 pp.
"Embracing Uncertainty," Kenneth A. Oye, Issues in Science and Technology, Vol XXVI, No 1, Fall 2009, pp 91-93.
"The Intellectual Commons and Property in Synthetic Biology," Kenneth A. Oye and Rachel Wellhausen, in Markus Schmidt et al (eds), Synthetic Biology: The Technoscience and its Societal Consequences, Springer, 2009, pp 121-140.
"What Rough Beast: Synthetic Biology and the Future of Biosecurity," Gautam Mukunda, Kenneth A. Oye and Scott Mohr, Politics and the Life Sciences, September 2009, Volume 28, Number 2, pp 2-26.
Subjects
17.430 International Relations Research Seminar
17.310/ESD103/STS482 Science, Technology and Public Policy
17.31/ESD082/STS82 Science, Technology and Public Policy
ESD.85/17.312/STS.461 Integrating Doctoral Seminar on Emerging Technologies
E40-437/E53-423
oye@mit.edu
