Spring 2025 Archives - Viterbi Conversations in Ethics

Featured Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

NIH Funding Freeze Stalls Applications to Public Medical Research Funds

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has stopped considering grant applications in the wake of the Trump administration’s funding freeze. This has stalled around 16,000 grant applications competing for $1.5 billion in NIH funding to develop cutting-edge treatments. This freeze threatens lives across the country, as scientists lose jobs, local economies are damaged, and the health of patients fighting life-threatening diseases is put in jeopardy.

Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

FDA Approval of Bioengineered Blood Vessels Raises Concerns about Expedited Medical Reviews

Mo Jiang March 31, 2025 Accelerated Approval Program FDA Medical Approval

The FDA’s Accelerated Approval (AA) program enables early approval of drugs that treat serious conditions by bypassing unmet regulatory conditions. Despite risks, the recent approval of Humacyte’s bioengineered blood vessels has sparked concerns over how medical devices are approved during this process.

Featured Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

The End of Break Room Banter: AI Teammates Reshape Workplace Culture

Mary Karapetyan March 16, 2025 AI Teammates Artificial Intelligence Corporate Workplace

AI teammates are a new variation of artificial intelligence designed to supplement employees in the workplace, boosting productivity while reducing burnout. Their integration into society underscores the urgent need for clear frameworks and regulations to ensure their ethical and responsible use.

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

Virtue Ethics: Cultivating Moral Character in a Modern World

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Aryan Shah with guest Branden leong This podcast explores the role of virtue ethics in engineering, emphasizing how virtues like compassion, integrity, and…

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

AR/VR and how they shape the future of technology

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Aryan Shah, Deep Shah, with guests “Greta Hoffmeister, Kariena Panpaliya, Dasean Volk, Hang Nguyen, Grace Eamer In this episode, the guests delve into…

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

The Ethics of War: Engineers, Weapons & Dilemmas

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Deep Shah with guest Nick Giustiniano Should engineers feel responsible for the weapons they create? Join host Deep and guest Nicholas Giustiniano, an…

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

Toxic Beauty: The Hidden Chemicals in Your Cosmetics

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Deep Shah with guest Khushi Kapasi We use cosmetics every day, but do we know what’s inside them? Host Deep sits down with…

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

Bridging Minds: Ethical Dimensions of Brain-Computer Interfaces

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Deep Shah with guest Michael Wang In this episode of the Viterbi Conversations in Ethics podcast, host Deep Shah is joined by Michael…

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

Cloud Computing : Ethics, Security and the Future of Digital Infrastructure

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Deep Shah with guest Mo Jiang In this episode of the Viterbi Conversations in Ethics podcast, host Deep Shah sits down with Mo…

Featured Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

De-extinction: Does the End Justify the Means?

Janessi Diaz March 8, 2025 CRISPR de-extinction Gene Editing

Colossal is a company committed to de-extinction. Its main mission is to bring back the woolly mammoth. This mission may help conserve critically endangered Asian elephants and mitigate the impacts of global warming. However, it also raises ethical concerns regarding the livelihood of wildlife that currently reside in the mammoth’s habitat.

Podcast

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

Virtue Ethics: Cultivating Moral Character in a Modern World

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Aryan Shah with guest Branden leong This podcast explores the role of virtue ethics in engineering, emphasizing how virtues like compassion, integrity, and…

Podcast Spring 2025 Spring 2025 VCE Podcast

AR/VR and how they shape the future of technology

VCE March 8, 2025

Hosted by Aryan Shah, Deep Shah, with guests “Greta Hoffmeister, Kariena Panpaliya, Dasean Volk, Hang Nguyen, Grace Eamer In this episode, the guests delve into…

Grand Challenges Special Issue

Spring 2023 Volume 6 Issue 3

Redefining Societal Progress for Engineers

Natasha Singh March 29, 2023

Dr. Erin Cech’s critique of the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges focuses heavily on the pitfalls of technological determinism. This paper supports Cech’s argument through a discussion of current examples of the consequences of technological determinism, such as the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, medication accessibility, and facial recognition technology. Though the consequences of a zealous engineering mentality are commonplace in our society, there are also current examples of tech companies neglecting to develop technology due to its possible negative consequences.

Spring 2023 Volume 6 Issue 3

How the Technical Sciences and the Social Sciences Should Go Hand-in-Hand

Charles Liu March 29, 2023

The fourteen Grand Challenges presented by the National Academy of Engineers (NAE) fail to involve ethics as a part of the solution to these issues. Traditionally, engineers have kept their work separate from its societal implications. Engineers and their non-technical counterparts have an obligation to view all technical solutions under the moral lens of ethicists and futurists. Going forward, engineers must be aware of their limits and work with experts outside of their fields to develop solutions that will be cognizant of society as a whole.

Spring 2023 Volume 6 Issue 3

The Lies We Tell to Inspire: Responding to the Engineering Double Standard

Shub Gaur March 29, 2023

The National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges are critiqued by Dr. Erin Cech for what she describes as a double standard in engineering. Though Cech rightly discusses a lack of accountability and acknowledgement within the profession, her argument lacks nuance. The Grand Challenges were ultimately a promotional tool meant to inspire the next generation of engineers, yet Cech holds them to a standard of being professional rules and guidelines. This paper will discuss the distinctions that Cech’s argument lacks, including placing an unreasonable amount of responsibility on engineers and overstating their influence.

Spring 2023 Volume 6 Issue 3

The Grand Challenges: Authorial Particularism and a Lost Opportunity for an Equitable Society

Huzaifa Aslam March 29, 2023

The fourteen Grand Challenges were developed by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in an effort to expose future generations to the wide range of innovation and technology that they could one day take part in. As detailed by the Challenges’ creators, the list includes challenges that are most significant to our current world. Dr. Erin Cech’s critique of the Grand Challenges is that a lack of diversity in the panel of engineering experts led to a lack of oversight into issues that are actually pertinent to developing nations. Cech’s argument that the Grand Challenges are a missed opportunity for social justice holds validity, but her mischaracterization of the lack of diversity requires further consideration.

Weekly News Profile

Featured Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

NIH Funding Freeze Stalls Applications to Public Medical Research Funds

Rachel Pak April 17, 2025

Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

FDA Approval of Bioengineered Blood Vessels Raises Concerns about Expedited Medical Reviews

Mo Jiang March 31, 2025

Featured Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

The End of Break Room Banter: AI Teammates Reshape Workplace Culture

Mary Karapetyan March 16, 2025

Featured Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

De-extinction: Does the End Justify the Means?

Janessi Diaz March 8, 2025

Spring 2025 Weekly News Profile

Returned Asteroid Samples Suggest the Building Blocks for Life are Scattered Across the Universe

Rachel Pak March 3, 2025

Asteroid samples collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx not only contain the pristine building blocks for life, but also the salty remains of an ancient water world. The spacecraft was able to help unlock these discoveries because it collected samples directly from the asteroid and carefully preserved them on the way back to Earth. These findings support the idea that asteroids delivered the building blocks of life to our planet early in its history, and may have delivered them elsewhere in the solar system. The success of this mission justifies the development of future sample retrieval missions to other cosmic bodies within our solar system.