A new fellowship residency at Duke University will examine efforts by regulators and industry leaders to avoid financial and environmental disasters, among others.
Launched this fall, the George C. Lamb Jr. Regulatory Fellows connects students and faculty who examine how scholars, industry leaders and regulators can come together to solve issues at the intersection of business, ethics and regulation.
The fellows are jointly hosted by Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics, Fuqua School of Business and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
Jennifer E. Miller, the program's first fellow, is the founding director of Bioethics International and a lab fellow in the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. She also served as a consultant on task forces for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United Nations.
Miller is an advocate for ethical practices in the pharmaceutical industry, including standards for clinical trials, informed consent and the implementation of clinical trials in developing countries.
For Miller, the residency will provide an opportunity to continue her research on the ethics and lack of trust associated with "the way medicines and vaccines are researched, developed and made globally accessible."
Miller will be joined in the spring semester by Umut Aydin, an assistant professor of political science at Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile, who specializes in competition policy.
In addition to teaching and research opportunities, the fellows will collaborate with the interdisciplinary faculty network involved with the Kenan Institute for Ethics' Rethinking Regulation program. The program, led by history professor Ed Balleisen, convenes workshops with legislators and produces reports to advise regulators and affect policy change.
Balleisen notes that the fellowship "offers our scholars and graduate students the chance to engage with some of the sharpest new thinking on regulatory governance. It's also a great opportunity to experiment with new interdisciplinary courses and deepen our collaborative research. We are very fortunate to have scholars of this caliber coming to Duke."
Kenan Institute for Ethics director Noah Pickus added that the collaboration of Kenan, Fuqua and Arts & Sciences "is a testament to the way that ethics crosses disciplines and schools at Duke."
The new fellows program is made possible by a gift from the late Elizabeth B. Lamb in honor of her husband, George C. Lamb Jr., the former chairman and chief executive of United Parcel Service. Lamb sought to make integrity and business ethics cornerstones of his leadership, under which the national and international networks were created that made the company into a global shipping giant.