Professor of Public Policy, Ford School of Public Policy; Professor of Women's Studies
About
Shobita Parthasarathy is Professor of Public Policy and Women's Studies, and Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, at University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the politics of science and technology, as well as the governance of ethically and socially controversial science and technology, in comparative perspective. She is also interested in how science and technology, and innovation systems, can better achieve public interest and social justice goals. She is the author of numerous articles and two books: Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and Building Genetic Medicine: Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics of Health Care (MIT Press, 2007). Her current research focuses on the national and international politics of technological interventions to alleviate poverty, with a focus in India. Findings from Building Genetic Medicine influenced the 2013 US Supreme Court decision prohibiting patents on isolated human genes. She has advised the US HHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society, the Austrian Genome Research Program, the European Patent Office, and the US Government Accountability Office, among other science and technology policymaking institutions.
To support her research, Prof. Parthasarathy has received fellowships and grants from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition, and Tax Law (Germany), the American Bar Foundation, the Wellcome Trust (UK), the National Science Foundation, and various programs at the University of Michigan. She is a Faculty Affiliate in UM's Science, Technology, and Society and Feminist Science Studies programs. She sits on the Council of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, and the Governing Council of the Science and Democracy Network.
Earlier in her career, Prof. Parthasarathy held postdoctoral fellowships at Northwestern University, the University of California–Los Angeles, and University of Cambridge. She has also worked for the National Academy of Sciences, RAND, Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the White House Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. She holds Masters and PhD degrees in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University and a Bachelor's Degree in Biology from the University of Chicago.
