About Us

Science, technology, engineering, and medicine exist in human contexts. STEMM fields are human, social endeavors, and the products and practices of those fields significantly impact human beings and the society and world in which we all live. The pressing problems of today require an interdisciplinary understanding provided by the Human Context of Science and Technology. From the COVID-19 pandemic to global climate change, from personalized medicine to the availability and affordability of healthcare, from the use of reproductive and genetic technologies to the use of technology to influence elections and social movements, from genomics to questions of race and gender, from artificial intelligence to concerns about privacy and data protection – all of these issues are simultaneously scientific, technological, social, political, and ethical. HCST builds on generations of work in the history, philosophy, rhetoric, and social studies of science, technology, and medicine. The HCST Certificate Program brings together scholars in the humanities and social sciences to engage with scientists and engineers to better understand and address these complex issues.