CSIRO-UQ Responsible Innovation Collaboration

The Centre for Policy Futures has partnered with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to examine the ethical, legal and social implications of a range of future areas of science and technological development. The CSIRO-UQ Responsible Innovation Collaboration is a six-year co-funded $3 million agreement that began in January 2018.

Assessing the benefits, risks and uncertainties that science and technology innovations present for society and the environment is a key priority for research institutes and universities. Such assessments are increasingly located throughout the innovation process in an effort to contribute to the deliberative development and deployment of future science and technology.

CSIRO's Future Science Platforms (FSPs) represent a strategic investment in emerging science that underpins innovation and has the potential to help reinvent and create new industries for Australia.  They are also designed to grow the capability of a new generation of researchers and attract the best students to work on areas of future science including synthetic biology, robotics and digital technologies, data mining and decision-making for agricultural and environmental management, precision health, and future energy systems. 

Working alongside other researchers at CSIRO’s FSPs, staff at CPF will focus on several, inter-related areas of inquiry to bring social science and humanities insights into innovation processes:

1. Identifying the multidimensionality of potential risks and responsibilities
2. Understanding trust in emerging technologies
3. Developing institutional effectiveness to seize opportunities and manage risk
4. Highlighting policy, regulatory, legal and community mechanisms to facilitate the positive outcomes from emerging technologies while minimising social, cultural and environmental risks.

The CSIRO-UQ Responsible Innovation Collaboration includes the appointment of two postdoctoral fellows and four PhD students undertaking research in the policy, regulatory, legal, social, environmental or ethical challenges posed by new areas of science and technology. PhD students are being supervised by both UQ and CSIRO scientists.