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Past Issues | About
the Report
Staff Notes
New Staff Member
Jana Asher joined SHR in February of this year. She is a Senior Program
Associate for both the Project on Science and Intellectual Property in the Public
Interest and the Science and Human Rights Program. Her past work has included
the design and implementation of a national survey on human rights abuses in
Sierra Leone, technical advice towards a national survey of human rights abuses
in East Timor, design of the stratification and modeling for an analysis of
data for Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), and development of
the statistical methods for estimating the death counts outlined in a report
to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Prior to work
in human rights data collection and analysis, Jana was an employee of the U.S.
Census Bureau, where she worked for both the Administrative Records Research
Group and also the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program. She holds
a B.A. in Anthropology and Japanese Studies from Wellesley College, and a M.S.
in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University, and is completing a Ph.D. in
Statistics with an Emphasis on Human Rights under the guidance of Professor
Stephen E. Fienberg at Carnegie Mellon University.
SHR in the News
The work of staff member Jana Asher was highlighted in the July 21st
issue of Science. In a three page News Focus written by Robin Mejia, Jana's
2004 work in Sierra Leone – where she led a national survey on human rights
abuses experienced during the 1991-2000 armed internal conflict – is lauded
for its ground-breaking advances in multicultural survey methodology. Also mentioned
in the article is a current SHR project in which Jana's data are being used
in the creation of a humanitarian-oriented report on the current situation in
Sierra Leone.
Jana Asher also participated as an invited speaker in the May 2006 Conference
on Research Use of Patented Inventions, sponsored by The Spanish National Research
Council (CSIC), the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (OEPM) and the Office
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with support from the European
Patent Office (EPO). Her talk unveiled preliminary results for the United States
from a multi-national survey undertaking by SIPPI, and her comments were published
in a May 18th news story by Intellectual Property Watch and in the June 5th
Weekly News of Managing Intellectual Property.
SIPPI Project Director Contributing to Report Series
The Center for the Management of Intellectual Property in Health Research and
Management (MIHR) has invited SHR staff member Stephen Hansen to revise
two of his publications for use in their upcoming handbook on intellectual property
management. The publications to be revised are "Facilitating Humanitarian Access
to Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Innovation," coauthored with Amanda Brewster
and Audrey Chapman and published by Innovation Strategy Today, and Traditional
Knowledge and Intellectual and Options for Traditional Knowledge Holders in
Protecting their Intellectual Property and Maintaining Biological Diversity,
coauthored with Justin Van Fleet and released as a AAAS publication.
SIPPI Staff Member Invited to Present Research
SIPPI Program Associate Mike Kisielewski will be presenting a research
paper at the 2006 Northeastern Political Science Meeting in Boston, MA. The
meeting will be held from November 9-11. Mike will discuss the findings of a
paper he is preparing on the international biodiversity regime and its relationship
to food sovereignty — a theme that SIPPI has been studying. This will be an
excellent opportunity to present the work of SHR-SIPPI and its relationship
to the social sciences.
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