Alondra Nelson
Honorary Degree Recipient: Doctor of Science
Rutgers is proud to bestow upon Alondra Nelson an honorary doctor of science degree. A scholar of science, technology, medicine, and social inequality, Nelson is the Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. She currently leads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and is a deputy assistant to President Joe Biden.
She served as the14th president of the Social Science Research Council, an international research nonprofit. Nelson was previously professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she also served as the inaugural Dean of Social Science. Nelson began her academic career on the faculty of Yale University, and there was recognized with the Poorvu Prize for interdisciplinary teaching excellence.
She has published award-winning, widely acclaimed books and articles. Nelson is currently at work on a book about science and technology policy in the Obama administration; Society after Pandemic, an essay collection; and new research exploring the sociology of bioethics.
Her books have been translated into Arabic and French. She is the author of The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome. Her books also include Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination, as well as Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (with Keith Wailoo and Catherine Lee), and Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life (with Thuy Linh Tu). In 2002, Nelson edited Afrofuturism, an influential special issue of Social Text, drawing together contributions from scholars and artists who were members of a synonymous online community she established in 1998.
She has held visiting professorships and fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the BIOS Centre at the London School of Economics, and the Bavarian American Academy. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.
From 2020–2021, Nelson was president-elect of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Nelson has contributed to national policy discussions on inequality and the social implications of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, big data, and human gene-editing. Her essays, reviews, and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Nature, WIRED, and Le Nouvel Observateur, and on National Public Radio, BBC Radio, The New Yorker Radio Hour, and PBS Newshour, among other venues.
She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Nelson was co-chair of the NAM Committee on Emerging Science, Technology, and Innovation and was a member of the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Responsible Computing Research.
Nelson serves as an advisor to the Obama Presidency Oral History Project. Prior to her White House appointment, she served on the boards of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Teagle Foundation, the Data & Society Research Institute, and the United States International University: Africa.
.