Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory University’s Center for Ethics, has been named a finalist for a prestigious World Technology Award in Ethics, to be presented by the World Technology Network (WTN) at the United Nations next week. Wolpe joins a roster of organizations and individuals from more than 60 countries around the world deemed to be doing the most innovative and impactful work in the ethics of technology as well as other technology categories.
The WTN is a curated membership community comprised of the world’s most innovative individuals and organizations in science, technology and related fields. The WTN and its members are focused on exploring what is imminent, possible and important in and around emerging technologies
The World Technology Awards have been presented by the WTN since 2000 as a way to honor those in 20 different categories of science and technology and related fields doing “the innovative work of the greatest likely long-term significance.”
"I am delighted to have been nominated in the ethics category of the 2011 World Technology Awards,” says Wolpe. “It is wonderful to be recognized by such an esteemed group of one’s peers.”
Wolpe, in addition to leading Emory’s Center for Ethics, is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Bioethics, the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair in Jewish Bioethics, and a professor in the departments of medicine, pediatrics psychiatry and sociology.
He serves as the first bioethicist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), where he is responsible for formulating policy on bioethical issues and safeguarding research subjects. He is co-editor of the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB), the premier scholarly journal in bioethics, and editor of AJOB Neuroscience, and sits on the editorial boards of over a dozen professional journals in medicine and ethics. Wolpe is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities; a fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; and is a fellow of the Hastings Center, the oldest bioethics institute in America.
The winners of the World Technology Awards will be announced during a ceremony at the United Nations on the evening of Oct. 26 at the close of the World Technology Summit, a two-day thought leadership conference Oct. 25-26 held in New York City and presented by the WTN in association with TIME magazine, Fortune, CNN, Science/AAAS, Technology Review and others.