Charis Thompson is a former professor of gender and women's studies and a founding director of the Science, Technology, and Society Center at UC Berkeley. Thompson read philosophy, psychology, and physiology at Oxford University, and got her Ph.D. from the Science Studies program at UC San Diego. Before coming to Berkeley, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Cornell University, and assistant professor in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Thompson is the author of Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies (MIT Press, 2005) — won the 2007 Rachel Carson Award from the Society for the Social Study of Science — and of Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (MIT Press, 2013). She is a recipient of the Social Science Division distinguished teaching award.