On November 30, 2025, Professor Jenny Reardon was honored as a TUM Ambassador by TUM President Thomas F. Hofmann for her long-standing and strong cooperation with TUM (Photo: Astrid Eckert/TUM).
Life at Crossroads
Jenny Reardon continued her environmental research and began a bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Kansas. When the human genome became a major topic in the 1990s, she was immediately fascinated and wanted to become a molecular biologist. But a trip to Berlin at the end of the Cold War raised doubts about her career ambitions. Jenny Reardon was so struck by the visible differences between East and West Berlin, and by the palpable optimism of reuniting Berlin, Germany, and the world, that she also enrolled in a double degree in political science with a focus on international relations.
The honorary title of TUM Ambassador means that I can make long-term plans with TUM.
On a whim, Jenny Reardon also applied to the then brand-new doctoral program in science and technology studies at Cornell University — and was accepted there as well. “It felt like a fork in the road for me,” she recalls. Ultimately, she chose science and technology studies. “The decision was quite difficult, because it was very daunting to take such a leap — moving from the safe and promising field of molecular biology into a research area that was still in its infancy.”
Science and Justice
Yet it was precisely in that leap that Jenny Reardon saw a great opportunity to bring the interdisciplinary questions so important to her into science and technology studies. She completed her doctorate in 2002. Since then, she has devoted her career intensively to exploring the entanglements of science and society, and to building the institutional frameworks needed to pursue these research questions in the first place.
The Science and Justice training program that Jenny Reardon founded in 2011 as founding director at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is a globally unique program pursuing exactly these goals — and it offers the kind of training that Jenny Reardon herself wished she had received.
Whether at the Science and Justice Research Center in Santa Cruz or at the Department of Science, Technology and Society (STS) at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology — both institutions share the goal of exploring the interactions between science, technology, and society, along with the broader ethical, social, political, and legal dimensions involved. In both places, the aim is to enable a more responsible and sustainable approach to science and innovation through interdisciplinary research and international collaboration.
TUM Professor Dr. Ruth Müller came to Santa Cruz in 2010 as the first visiting scholar in the field of Science and Justice. In 2012, she went on to become one of the founding members of the Munich Center for Technology and Society at TUM, which in 2021 evolved into the Department of Science, Technology and Society (STS). Not only has Ruth Müller visited Santa Cruz on numerous occasions since then, but she has in turn invited Jenny Reardon to Munich and TUM multiple times.
Sealing the Collaboration
Every time Jenny Reardon is invited to TUM, she looks forward to her visit. At STS, she can share her ideas on ethical, legal, and social questions in the areas of genomics, epigenomics, and health equity, and hope for valuable feedback. “It’s wonderful to have a base here at TUM for the kind of research I do,” she says. In recognition of her enduring and close collaboration with TUM as a researcher, Jenny Reardon was honored on November 30, 2025, by TUM President Thomas F. Hofmann with the title of TUM Ambassador. “This honorary title signals to me that I can plan with TUM on a long-term basis,” says Reardon. “The role of TUM Ambassador allows me to commit to my colleagues at TUM in a way that would not be possible for me without this ongoing support.”
For years, TUM Ambassador Jenny Reardon (2nd from right) has been conducting research together with TUM Professor Ruth Müller (right) on ethical, legal, and social issues in the fields of genomics, epigenomics, and health equity. The picture shows the two researchers at the TUM Ambassador 2025 Award Ceremony together with TUM Ambassador Professor Dr. Oren Schuldiner from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel (3rd from right) and TUM Professor Dr. Thomas Misgeld (left) (Image: Astrid Eckert/TUM).
Jenny Reardon (Photo: Karolina Knittel).
TUM Ambassador 2025
Jenny Reardon completed her bachelor’s degrees in both biology and political science at the University of Kansas in 1993. In 1998, she earned her master’s degree in Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, followed by her doctorate in 2002. In 2011, she founded the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. Since 2014, she has been a professor of sociology and faculty member in Biomolecular Science and Engineering at UC. Her list of fellowships and awards spans many pages, among them the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Humboldt Foundation, the U.S. Congressional Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and her recognition as a TUM Ambassador.
For Jenny Reardon, it has always been important to have a fulfilling life outside the university as well. She begins every day with a yoga practice, enjoys rock climbing, and builds her own wooden furniture. But cycling is her true passion. She recently launched a project in which she is cycling over a thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers, and other residents of the high plains about the best ways to experience and care for the prairie.
