Dr. John W. Traphagan is a Professor of Religious Studies and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Traphagan holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh, an MAR in social and religious ethics from Yale University, and a BA in political science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Dr. Traphagan’s research interests revolve around the intersection between culture and science and have explored issues such as the cultural construction of illness in Japan, concepts of autonomy in biomedical ethics, and the relationship between culture, religion and science in the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He has published numerous articles and chapters in anthropology, medical and religious studies journals and books and is the author of Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan (SUNY Press, 2000); The Practice of Concern: Ritual, Well-Being and Aging in Rural Japan (Carolina Academic Press, 2004); Rethinking Autonomy: A Critique of Principlism in Biomedical Ethics (SUNY 2013); and Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Imagination: SETI at the Intersection of Science, Religion, and Culture (Springer, 2015).