The Research Centre for Biotechnology, Society and the Environment
(FSP BIOGUM)
BIOGUM is a research institute of the University of Hamburg.
It was founded in the 1980s by decision of the Parliament of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in consensus with the University of Hamburg Academic Senate concurrently with the Research Centres for Genetic Engineering. As an institutional body, BIOGUM operates directly under the Academic Senate of the University.
BIOGUM has formed the following research groups:
Objective and Task of FSP BIOGUM:
1) By means of interdisciplinary research, BIOGUM aims for a better understanding of the relation between technological innovation and socio-cultural development in order to contribute to decision-making challenges of the future.
2) The main tasks of BIOGUM are as follows:
- to explore for preconditions, dynamics of development, constraints as well as implications of scientific and technological innovation in the life sciences while also looking for technological and social alternatives;
- to develop criteria, concepts, and procedures for the assessment of scientific and technological innovation in the life sciences as well as the impact of their application, particularly in the fields of agriculture and biomedicine;
- to realise individual projects for the study of the ecological, medical, and social consequences of scientific and technological innovation in the life sciences as well as their applications. BIOGUM works in cooperation with corresponding university courses in the medicine, natural and social sciences.
3) BIOGUM follows an inter- and transdisciplinary approach as a collaboration of scientists from the above-mentioned faculties in deliberation with scientists from various other research institutes.
In accordance with its objectives, the findings of BIOGUM are made available to parliaments, governmental and nongovernmental organisations as well as to professional and economic associations.
