David H. Guston

David H. Guston is the Founding Director of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, where he is also interim co-director of the Institute for the Future of Innovation in Society. He joined ASU in 2005, after eleven years on the faculty at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Professor Guston’s ideas about boundary organizations and the anticipatory governance of emerging technologies have been incorporated into governmental and non-governmental organizations and research programs in many parts of the world. His book, Between Politics and Science, won the APSA’s Don K. Price award for the best book in science, technology and environmental politics in 2002. He has been principal investigator on nearly $15M in NSF awards – including the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU and the Virtual Institute for Responsible Innovation – and co-investigator on another $7M. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Responsible Innovation and served as the North American editor of Science and Public Policy. Professor Guston served on the National Academy of Engineering's Steering Committee on Engineering Ethics and Society and has testified to panels of the National Academies’ Board on Life Sciences, the Board on Higher Education and Workforce, and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In 2002, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2017 he became a Foundation Professor at ASU.

He grew up in Oakland, NJ with parents Herbert and Sheila Guston, sisters Debra and Judith Guston, and Scottish terrier Angus. He attended Indian Hills High School, where he earned four varsity letters in fencing and three in soccer. He holds a B.A., cum laude, from Yale, where he created his own major in “Technology and Society,” wrote for and became editor-in-chief of The Yale Scientific Magazine, and helped the fencing team win “the little Iron Man” trophy, the oldest still-contested intercollegiate trophy. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from MIT, and he did pre- and post-doctoral training at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.