Professional Affiliation

Formerly European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Technological Development, Directorate on Science, Economy and Society

Expert Bio

Eleonore Pauwels is a former member of the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Wilson Center and a former Global Fellow. She is a writer and international science policy expert, who specializes in the governance and democratization of converging technologies. Pauwels analyzes and compares how transformative technologies, such as artificial intelligence and genome-editing, raise new opportunities and challenges for health, security, economics and governance in different geo-political contexts. She analyzes the promises and perils that will likely arise with the development of AI civil and military technologies and future networks of intelligent and connected bio-labs.

Pauwels regularly testifies before U.S. and European authorities including the U.S. Department of State, NAS, NIH, NCI, FDA, the National Intelligence Council, the European Commission and the UN. But she is also well-versed in communicating complex and novel scientific developments for lay audiences (her TEDxCERN on CRISPR) and her writing has been featured in media outlets such as Nature, The New York Times, The Guardian, Scientific American, Le Monde, Slate and The Miami Herald.

Wilson Center Project

Citizen Health Innovators Project

Project Summary

Citizen Health Innovators Project

Her work also fosters the democratization of disruptive health technologies, including AI and genomics, and the inclusion of patients and citizens through participatory health design. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Pauwels leads the Citizen Health Innovators Project. With this venture, she focuses on developing regulatory and governance mechanisms for the fast-growing ecosystem of health innovators, built around maker-spaces and community bio labs, to support responsible innovation in distributed networks. This project is part of her larger effort to design actionable ethics and governance strategies to enable responsible and fair citizen particpation in new health and genomics technologies.

Responsible Innovation in Genomics - International Governance

Pauwels has been awarded several grants by U.S and the European Commission. She is co-PI of a 4 million Euro grant, Synenergene, which promotes responsible research and innovation in genomics and synthetic biology. 

Major Publications

Tyson, E., Bowser, A., Palmer, J., Kapan, D., Bartumeus, F., Martin, B., Pauwels, E.. Global Mosquito Alert: Building Citizen Science Capacity for Surveillance and Control of Disease-Vector Mosquitoes.  April 2018.

Denton S. and Pauwels E., AI and Privacy Policy Report, Wilson Center, March 2018.

Pauwels E. and Grevatt N., The Social Benefits of Blockchain for Health Data: Securing Patient Privacy & Control , Policy Brief, Wilson Center, November 2017.

Pauwels E., "Responsible Governance of Artificial Intelligence - The AI Lab , Video, November 2017

Pauwels E. and Johnson W.,  How to Optimize Human Biology: Where Genome Editing and Artificial Intelligence Collide , Policy Brief, Wilson Center, October 2017.

Pauwels E. and Dunlap G., The Intelligent and Connected Bio-Labs of the Future: Promise and Peril in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Policy Brief, Wilson Center, September 2017.

Pauwels E., The Great US-China Biotechnology and Artifical Intelligence Race, The Diplomat, August 2017.

Pauwels E., The Internet of Living Things, Scientific American, July 2017.

Pauwels E., The New Bio-Citizen: How the Democratization of Genomics Will Transform Our Lives from Epidemics Management to the Internet of Living Things, Policy Brief, Wilson Center, May 2017.

Pauwels E. and A. Vidyarthi, Who Will Own The Secrets in Our Genes? A U.S.-China Race in Artificial Intelligence and Genomics, Policy brief, Wilson Center, November 2017.

Pauwels E., Rejeski D., and J. Koo, Science and Technology Forecasting, W.S. Bainbridge, M.C. Roco (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Convergence, 2016.

Pauwels E., Surviving The Tech Storm, Issues in Science and Technologies, Summer 2016.

Pauwels E. and A. Vidyarthi, How our Unhealthy Cybersecurity Infrastructure is Hurting Biotechnology, Policy Brief, WWICS, Spring 2016.

Pauwels E. and Jim Dratwa, Personalized Medicine: A Faustian Bargain, Scientific American, December 11, 2015. 

Pauwels, E., STAT, Expert Debate: Are we playing with fire when we edit human genes; Don’t let the story get ahead of the facts, November 17, 2015.

Pauwels E. and Jim Dratwa, How Identity Evolves in the Age of Genetic Imperialism, Scientific American, March 13, 2015.

Pauwels E., Mind The Metaphor, Nature, Vol. 500, August 29, 2013, p. 523-524.

Pauwels E., Our Genes, Their Secrets, The New York Times, June 18, 2013.

Pauwels E., Watch Where You Shed Your DNA—an Artist Might Use It, Slate, May 31, 2013.

Pauwels E. and Skallas P., Science Fiction: Worker bees cannot leave, Methods Quarterly, July 2015.

Eleonore Pauwels :  On ne sait pas communiquer sur la modification du génome, Interview, Le Monde, October 26, 2015.

Pauwels E., “Who Let the Humanists into the Lab?,” Valparaiso University Law Review’s 2011 Symposium Issue –The Synthetic Cell: Bioethics, Law and the Implications of Synthetic Life, Volume 45, forthcoming August 2011.

Previous Terms

2007 - 2008, Public Policy Scholar, A Critical Approach toward the Progressive ‘Ethnicization’ of Science and Governance: The Case of Cognitive Enhancement Technology in the EU and the U.S.