Rosalyn Berne (curriculum vitae) received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Rhetoric and Communication Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies/ Bio-Ethics from University of Virginia. Currently appointed as Associate Professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society, she previously served as Head of School for Tandem Friends School in Charlottesville, Virginia; Executive Director of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the Darden School of Graduate Business; Assistant Vice President for Administration of the University of Virginia; and Director of Admissions at Darden.

Rosalyn Berne’s research focuses on the ethical, cultural, and societal implications of the emergence and convergence of nanotechnology, bio-technology, information technology and cognitive sciences. She is particularly interested in the role and function of moral imagination, mythology and religious belief in conceptualizations pertaining to ethics in technological development. These she has explored and discussed in her book Nanotalk: Conversations with Scientists and Engineers about Ethics, Meaning and Belief in the Development of Nanotechnology (Erlbaum, 2005), and continued in her next book on the subject, Science Fiction, Nano-Ethics and the Moral Imagination (Springer Press, 2008). Berne uses science fiction writing as both a source of data, and a source of deliberation about the future of radical, socio-technical change in the world. She is now finishing her first novel, Waiting in the Silence, which explores the nature of womanhood, aging, and spirituality, as these may be in a nanotechnology driven, socio-technical future.