Aaron Panofsky is the Director of and a Professor in the Institute for Society and Genetics, as well as a Professor in Public Policy, and Sociology. He is a sociologist of science, knowledge, and culture with a special interest on the history, intellectual organization, social dimensions, and ethical implications of genetics.
His award-winning book Misbehaving Science is a history of the field of behavior genetics that explains how the way scientists have dealt with successive episodes of controversy have shaped the field’s culture and organization and limited its intellectual possibilities. He has also written critically about attempts to apply behavior genetics to problems of social policy and education and researched how genetics is transforming the concept of race. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Carnegie Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Templeton World Charity Foundation.