Dana Mahr

Dana Mahr is a science researcher and technology assessor at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Her research focuses on the intersection of digital health technologies, personalized medicine and their social, ethical and epistemological implications. She investigates how socio-technological innovations - in particular artificial intelligence, digital data systems and citizen science - are transforming traditional roles in healthcare and influencing decision-making processes, patient autonomy and data management.

In her publications, Dana Mahr often sheds light on the ethical dimensions of digital health technologies. In her work Digital Risk Distribution and COVID-19, for example, she addresses the tension between public health and economic stability in the context of contact tracing technologies. Another central topic of her research is the democratization of science, for example through citizen science, as presented in her article Citizen Science and Biomedical Research. Here she examines the opportunities and challenges arising from the involvement of lay people in medical research processes. Her book The Knowledge of Experience highlights how marginalized groups use medical knowledge, bringing epistemic diversity to science and healthcare. This work is in the context of her larger research on issues of inclusion and epistemic justice in personalized medicine.

In addition to her academic work, Dana Mahr is co-editor of the EPF Essays series at Edition Patrick Frey, together with Alexandra Papadopoulos and Peter Schneider. In this interdisciplinary series, social, cultural and technological topics are addressed and critically reflected upon in an innovative way.