As the 2017-2018 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow in the Judicial Branch, I created an online, multi-part judicial education program covering topics in neuroscience relevant to judges and court employees. The program includes dynamic videos, featuring subject matter experts, interactive content, and cheat sheets that summarize major take-home messages. This fellowship provided an excellent opportunity to exercise my science communication and information visualization skills.
Neuroscience is a rapidly advancing field — discoveries in a number of areas promise to impact policy decisions and to generate scientific evidence appearing in legal matters. Particularly given advances initiated by the BRAIN Initiative and its partners (e.g. Allen Institute for Brain Science and The Kavli Foundation), we must continue to consider the policymaking, ethical and legal implications of these technologies.