Lyle Fearnley is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Singapore University of Technology and Design. Trained as an anthropologist of science and medicine, Fearnley received a Joint Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco.  His fieldwork-based research explores the assemblages of science and rural life in contemporary China, where agricultural modernization projects are giving rise to new environmental and health risks. His book project — The Influenza Epicenter: Rural China and Animal Disease in an Age of Emerging Pandemics —analyzes the encounters of global health and China’s livestock farms during the avian influenza crisis.  Currently, he is developing a new project on the contested futures of rice breeding and genetics in China.  The project analyzes the intersections of Chinese rice genome research, food safety movements, and the human-environment configurations of wet-rice paddy agriculture.