Rosalyn W. Berne is an associate professor of engineering and society at the University of Virginia, where she teaches the courses Science, Technology and Contemporary Issues: Science, Fiction and the Future and Science Fiction and New Reproductive Technologies.

Berne's research into ethics in nanotechnology development earned her the National Science Foundation Award. She has served on the advisory boards of the Journal of Nanotechnology Ethics and the Journal of Nanotechnology Education. Berne regularly delves into the role and function of the moral imagination, personal belief, mythology, and metaphor in the pursuit of technological development.

A guest panelist on NPR's Science Friday show, Berne was featured on National Public Television's Fred Friendly nanotechnology seminars, Power of the Small, in which she discussed the societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology. She lives with her husband in Central Virginia, retreating to their Blue Ridge mountain cabin to write.