Panelist Biographies

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  Yishu Mao

  Yishu Mao holds an MA in global studies from Humboldt University in Berlin, and spent parts of her studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi as well as the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO) in Buenos Aires to conduct research on globalization from the Global South perspective. Before that, she studied literature and digital humanities at Bard College in New York. She has worked at Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) on a range of topics including the ideology of Chinese overseas students, digital development, and the intersection of online public opinion and policymaking in China. Her current research focuses on the ethics and values in the development of science and technology in China, particularly in the field of Artificial Intelligence. During the time of her visiting fellowship in the Lise Meitner Research Group, Mao Yishu will also work on a study of the complex role of Chinese scientists in the COVID-19 crisis, in collaboration with Anna Lisa Ahlers and other members of the group.

• 
  Scott Knowles

  Scott Gabriel Knowles is a Professor in the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He is a historian of disaster worldwide. He focuses on the historical processes that make disasters possible, and the application of history to reduce future disasters. Since March of 2020 Knowles has hosted #COVIDCalls every weekday, a live podcast discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  He was (2019) a research fellow of the Interuniversity Centre for the History of Science and Technology, NOVA University of Lisbon. He has previously been a research fellow or visiting faculty member of CIGIDEN/Catolica Chile (2018), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2016), the Rachel Carson Center (2016), and the University of Tokyo (2015).

  Knowles is the author/editor of six books—including The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Legacies of Fukushima: 3.11 in Perspective (co-edited with Kyle Cleveland Ryuma Shineha, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021); Worlds Fairs in the Era of the Cold War (co-edited with Art Molella, Pittsburgh University Press, 2019); The Second Environmental Crisis (co-edited with James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf (Springer, 2019); Building Drexel: A University and Its City, 1891-2016 (co-edited with Richardson Dilworth (Temple University Press, 2016); and Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). He is also publication series co-editor (with Kim Fortun) of "Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster" with the University of Pennsylvania Press.

  His work on the history of risk and disaster has appeared in Daedalus, Anthropocene Review, Natural Hazards Observer, History and Technology, Journal of Policy History, American Scientist, Technology and Culture, and Engineering Studies—he has also written for Hankyoreh, New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Slate, Conservation Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Hill.  Knowles is completing two new books: The United States of Disaster; and, Slow Disaster.

• 
  Laura Spinney

  Laura Spinney is a writer and science journalist. Her writing on science has appeared in The Guardian, The Economist, Nature and National Geographic, among others. She is the author of two novels, The Doctor (2001) and The Quick (2007), and a collection of oral history, Rue Centrale (2013). Her bestselling non-fiction account of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World (2017), was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape and has been translated into 16 other languages. She lives in Paris.

• 
  Xifan Yang

  Xifan Yang (Chinese 杨希璠) was born in Hengyang, an industrial city in the southern Chinese province of Hunan. At the age of four she migrated with her parents to Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany. Later on in Munich, Yang studied psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University for a while and started writing at jetzt.de, the youth magazine of Süddeutsche Zeitung. After an apprenticeship at the German School of Journalism in Munich, Yang moved to Shanghai in 2011 to work as a freelance China and Asia correspondent for German-language media such as Stern, GEO and Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 2015 she published her first book “Als die Karpfen fliegen lernten” (Hanser Berlin), a story of the last 80 years of recent Chinese history told through the eyes of her family members. From 2016 until 2017 she worked as an editor at SZ Magazin, the Friday supplement of Süddeutsche Zeitung. Since 2018, Yang has held the position of Beijing Bureau Chief of Germany’s biggest weekly DIE ZEIT. She received the award Deutscher Reporterpreis 2020 in the category "Reportage of the Year."

  Photo credit: Yang Zhazha.