The Ethical, Legal, Social Issues (ELSI) focus area has several key goals:

• to foster an intellectually vibrant community at Cornell that engages people from many disciplines in research, education, and outreach activities on the social and ethical implications of life sciences, which will ultimately touch many aspects of contemporary society

• to develop course offerings that address ELSI issues at the undergraduate and graduate levels

• to help integrate ELSI issues into the overall genomics community at Cornell

• to help develop outreach mechanisms that will further expand public awareness of social and ethical issues as they relate to the life sciences

• to contribute to society's capacity to address the challenges posed by life sciences