A short third-person profile of Andrew Maynard for grounding when context about who is speaking is useful. For his first-person voice on doctoral work, see personal_note.md.
Andrew Maynard is a scientist, author, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions at Arizona State University, where he directs the Future of Being Human initiative. He sits on PhD committees across a wide range of disciplines — from engineering to philosophy, public health, social science, applied data analytics, emerging technologies, science policy, and more — and has worked at the intersection of science, policy, and public understanding for three decades.
He came to academia by an indirect route. Andrew was a first-generation undergraduate — an uncle on his mother’s side had been to university, but neither of his parents had — and the family was not wealthy; without a full free ride from UK government grants, going to university at all would not have been possible. He went on to study physics at Birmingham University in the UK, then spent two years working as a management trainee in water treatment and reclamation for Severn Trent Water, before returning to do a PhD in high-resolution electron microscopy and aerosol physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He still describes himself, candidly, as having spent much of those three Cambridge years convinced he didn’t belong there.
His career since has run from the research arm of the UK Health and Safety Executive, through the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (and federal cross-agency leadership on nanotechnology research and policy), to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. In 2015 he moved into a tenured professorship at the University of Michigan, and from there to his current position at ASU, where he chaired the university promotion and tenure committee for two years. Across these roles his work has covered occupational and environmental health, risk science, nanotechnology safety, responsible innovation, toxicology, public engagement, and the navigation of advanced technology transitions across emerging fields that include gene editing, nanotechnology, quantum technologies, neurotech, and artificial intelligence. Somewhere along the way he stopped being a “physicist” in any narrow sense, and now describes himself as an un-disciplinarian — someone whose mastery lies not in any single field, but in working fluidly across the boundaries between them. He maintains, however, that he still thinks like a physicist whatever the subject in front of him.
Andrew has authored or co-authored seven books (including three trade books) and writes regularly at The Future of Being Human, a Substack on the human dimensions of emerging technology. His scholarly output spans peer-reviewed publications (Google Scholar h-index 57; 27,972 citations as of April 2026), books, public writing, podcasts, courses, and thought leadership — the latter of which he regards as legitimate and often more impactful forms of scholarly contribution than journal articles alone. Central concepts in his work include advanced technology transitions and risk innovation: approaching risk as multifaceted threats to value. The driving conviction behind his public-facing work is that “everyone — regardless of background — has a right to understand, shape, and thrive in the future being built around them.”
Several threads in his published work are of direct relevance to this site. His 2018 essay on the need for a more student-supportive PhD system addresses the structural realities of doctoral programs and the asymmetries of the advisor-student relationship. The five-part Letters from the Department of Intellectual Craft series — forthcoming as a chapter in Academic Cultures: Perspectives from the Future, edited by Michael Crow and William Dabars (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026) — develops a contemporary reading of C. Wright Mills on the practice of scholarly craft. And his work on the artisanal intellectual — the figure who chooses to engage knowledge work with deliberate attention to craft and provenance, rather than only to output — carries direct implications for what a doctoral student is becoming, and how, in an AI-saturated academy.
Outside of work, his personal and professional lives are, in his own words, “so deeply intermingled that they are essentially inseparable.” He listens to a lot of classical music, enjoys vinyl, is a bit of a hi-fi buff, counts Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Iain M. Banks among his most consequential influences, and is on record as not being able to make it through the closing credits of Contact without getting a bit teary. He values kindness, compassion, and humility; he dislikes hubris, preachiness, and refusal to listen.
For the personal version of all this — what he thinks about doctoral work and why — see personal_note.md.
For more on his work, see andrewmaynard.net and his ASU profile.