Saheli Datta Burton

Saheli Datta is a postdoctoral STS scholar at the Foresight Lab within the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (GHSM), led by the eminent sociologist Professor Nikolas Rose and funded by the European Commission H2020's flagship Human Brain Project (HBP).

Saheli is also the Research Ethics Officer for the King's Research Ethics Office; permanent Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Solidarity Studies, Department of Politics, University of Vienna, Vienna; member of the HBP's Communication Working Group (HBP-CWG) and steering committee member of the Biotechnology and Society research hub at King's (BIOS).

Prior to joining the HBP, Saheli was a part of the UK ESRC's Rising Powers project at King's Department of Political Economy led by renowned Professor of Politics, Brian Salter and Professor Alex Faulkner. She holds a PhD and MSc (with Distinction) from King's, and a BA in Economics from Columbia University, New York.  

Research

Currently, Saheli's research focuses on understanding the socio-political and -economic implications of emerging biomodifying technologies in health and medicine with a focus on regenerative medicine and biorobotics or robotics-assisted medicine. In regenerative medicine, Saheli is specifically looking to identify the emerging techno-scientific practices at the micro level (in China, India, and USA) that are leading to shifts in the complex global value chain of innovation in the life sciences where inter-state cooperation is an increasingly prominent feature.

In biorobotics, the aim is to understand and anticipate the complex and unprecedented ways in which the emerging technological imperatives of nanobots intended for in-vivo cargo delivery are changing or likely to change the bioeconomy and its implications for future societies.