Erik Fisher

Biography

Erik Fisher is the principle investigator for the Socio-Technical Integration Research project (STIR; NSF #0849101), assistant director of international activities at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS; NSF #0531194), and assistant professor in the School of Government, Politics, and Global Studies at Arizona State University.  Fisher has a joint appointment at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) and leads a Real-time Technology Assessment research thrust for CNS.  Fisher studies the multi-level governance of emerging technologies, spanning the nested chains of agency from “lab to legislature.”  He developed the collaborative, interdisciplinary approach of Midstream Modulation to help understand how social and ethical aspects of science and engineering decision-making may be broadened.  To this end, he has been employed in over twenty laboratories on three continents as part of the STIR project.  Fisher’s work has appeared in journals such as Science and Public Policy, Technology in Society, and NanoEthics and he is editor (along with Cynthia Selin and Jameson Wetmore) of The Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society, Volume 1: Presenting Futures (Springer 2008).  Previously, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Fisher was a research scientist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, where he acted as the humanities advisor to the College of Engineering and Applied Science Dean, instructor in Engineering Management, and “Embedded Humanist” in a Mechanical Engineering laboratory.  Fisher holds a doctorate in environmental studies (science policy), a master’s degree in classics (both from the University of Colorado), and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and mathematics (from St. John’s College in Santa Fe and Annapolis).