September Williams

September Williams, MD, is a Black American physician-writer, bioethicist, and filmmaker. Dr. Williams creates and promotes narrative inquiries in bioethics on screens and print which are diverse, humanitarian, and scientifically imbued. She is an internist whose post graduate fellowships underpinned a clinical career spanning cradle to the grave -- serving those in most need of care.

Joshua Mezrich

Dr. Josh Mezrich is a Professor of Organ Transplantation at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His surgical interests include liver transplantation, kidney transplantation, and laparoscopic donor nephrectomy. Dr. Mezrich has a strong interest in creative writing. He has published in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington post. His first book, When Death Becomes Life, was published by HarperCollins on January 15, 2019 and has sold in 12 countries outside the United States.

Jonathan Garfinkel

Jonathan Garfinkel is an internationally renowned author of poetry, plays and prose. He is currently doing a PhD in the field of Medical and Health humanities at the University of Alberta, where he is writing a literary memoir about living with type one diabetes and Loop, a DIY artificial pancreas system. He is the recipient of a SSHRC Bombardier Canada graduate scholarship for his research.

Scott Kim

Dr. Scott Kim is a Senior Investigator in the Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health. He combines philosophical, clinical, and empirical research approaches to his work, using a variety of methods to address several bioethical topics, including: ethical issues in pragmatic clinical trials, assessment of decision-making capacity, surrogate consent for incapacitated patients, theory of informed consent, end of life issues (especially euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide), and a variety of topics in research ethics.

Lisa Gruenberg

Dr. Lisa Gruenberg is a volunteer physician, medical educator, and writer. She is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, where she teaches clinical anatomy, bioethics and social medicine, and is an OSCE examiner, a member of the Center for Bioethics, the Brigham and Women's Hospital's Division of Global Health Equity, and the Initiative for Art and Medicine. Her essays have been published in Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review and the Intima, A Journal of Narrative Medicine, among others. About her memoir, Jane Brox, author of "Brilliant" and "Silence" writes: “Gruenberg’s search for coherence becomes a journey of both discovery and imagination, and ultimately brings her to an understanding that proves also to be a form of healing. My City of Dreams is a gift—an honest and thoughtful book, beautifully written and full of compassion.”

Kathryn Phillips 

Kathryn A. Phillips, PhD is Professor of Health Economics and Health Services Research, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of California San Francisco. She founded and leads the UCSF Center for Translational and Policy Research on Precision Medicine (TRANSPERS), which focuses on developing objective evidence on how to implement precision medicine into health care so that it is effective, efficient, and equitable.

Mark Kuczewski

Mark G. Kuczewski, PhD is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) and a Fellow of the Hastings Center. He created the Sanctuary Doctor website with Drs. Johana Mejias-Beck and Amy Blair to assist clinicians in supporting immigrant patients. He led the effort to make the Stritch School of Medicine thefirst medical school in the nation to openly welcome applicants who are DACA recipients.

Matthew Porteus, MD, PhD

Dr. Porteus is an Associate Clinical Professor and attends at the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital where he takes care of pediatric patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. He completed his combined MD, PhD at Stanford Medical School, and residency in Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital. For his fellowship and postdoctoral research, he applied homologous recombination as a strategy to correct disease causing mutations in stem cells as definitive and curative therapy for children with genetic diseases of the blood, particularly sickle cell disease. His research program continues to focus on developing genome editing by homologous recombination as curative therapy for children with genetic diseases but also has interests in the clonal dynamics of heterogeneous populations and the use of genome editing to better understand musculoskeletal diseases.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020 | 10am - 11am PDT

Keith Wailoo, PhD

Keith Wailoo, PhD is Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs. He is jointly appointed in the Department of History and in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He is former Vice Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs, former Chair of History, and current President of the American Association for the History of Medicine (2020-2022). His research straddles history and health policy, touching on drugs and drug policy, on the politics of race and health, on the interplay of identity, ethnicity, gender, and medicine, and on controversies in genetics and society. His next book, to be published in 2021, is Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette (University of Chicago Press).

Tuesday, September 29, 2020 | 10am - 11am PDT

Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBE

Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBE, is the John Russell Dickson, MD Presidential Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. A lawyer and bioethicist by training, her scholarly work focuses on the ethics and regulation of research with human subjects and related issues, including access to investigational therapies outside clinical trials before they have been approved by the FDA. She is the founder and co-chair of the Consortium to Advance Effective Research Ethics Oversight (AEREO), which aims to understand, evaluate, and improve IRB quality and effectiveness. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has focused on FDA policy, drug and vaccine development, ethical conduct of research and allocation of scarce investigational products.

Tuesday, October 27, 2020  | 10am - 11am PDT

Jason Delborne, PhD

Jason A. Delborne is Professor of Science, Policy, and Society and University Faculty Scholar at North Carolina State University, with appoints in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources in the College of Natural Resources and the Genetic Engineering and Society Center. He teaches and conducts research at the intersection of environmental policy, biotechnology, and public engagement, using qualitative research methodologies to explore how policymakers, stakeholders and members of the public interface with emerging biotechnologies designed for environmental benefit. Delborne was twice appointed to expert committees of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), which published Gene Drives on the Horizon (2016) and Forest Health and Biotechnology (2019). Recent projects have focused on the genetically engineered chestnut tree, a gene drive mouse for biodiversity conservation, and the management of free ranging cats in National Parks.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020 | 9:30am - 10:30am PST

Jantina de Vries

Jantina de Vries is an Associate Professor in Bioethics at the Department of Medicine of the University of Cape Town. Her work focuses on developing ethical best practice for collaborative health research in Africa, with a particular emphasis on genomics and biobanking. Amongst others, she has contributed to developing an evidence base for best practice in informed consent for African genomics research, investigating ethical challenges relating to the sharing of African samples and data, exploring what constitutes fairness and equity in African research collaborations, and studying how genomic research may impact on stigma relating to disease. Jantina co-directs the IFGENERA H3Africa ELSI Collaborative Centre. She was the founding Chair of the H3Africa Working Group on Ethics (2013-2016) and is a member of: the Research Ethics Board of Médecins Sans Frontières, the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Board on Genome Editing, the Steering Committee of the Global Forum for Bioethics in Research, the H3Africa Steering Committee and the Advisory Board for the Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA) based at Stanford University.

Tuesday, December 8, 2020 | 10am - 11am PST

E. "Ann" Jeschke  

Dr. Erika “Ann” Jeschke, PhD is currently working with the Air Force Research Lab, the Army Institute for Surgical Research, and Navy Medical Research unit on a program of research to develop a broader understanding of the impact of catastrophic injury exposure on various forward surgical trauma teams in the United States Military. The goal of this research is to develop a theory of performance for trauma medicine that is framed by culturally sensitive and salient attributes of well-being. She also serves as an ethics consultant to Special Operations Medicine Prolonged Field Care Working Group and is a Fellow at the University of Chicago MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Her research is grounded in the following question: What does it mean to care amidst violence? Relying on medical humanities and anthropology, she seeks to expand the medical context of caring beyond the clinical context and physician-patient dyad to include communal healing rituals as a means of restoring social identity and social justice after experiences of collective trauma.

Tuesday, January 12, 2021 | 10am - 11am PST

Jacqueline Genovese, Colleen Cuddy, and Suzette Shipp

Jacqueline Genovese, MFA is Executive Director of the Medicine and Muse program. She leads a Literature and Medicine Series for Stanford physicians as well as a War Literature and Writing seminar for Stanford Military affiliated students.  

Colleen Cuddy, MA is the Director of Research and Academic Collaboration at Lane Medical Library, Stanford University where she oversees data research and access services, user experience and communication as well as the Medical History Center.  

Suzette Shipp, MSc works as a Life Science Technologist in the Lorry Lokey Stem Cell Research Building and is a lifelong pursuer of racial justice in the Kingian Nonviolence tradition.

Tuesday, February 2, 2021 | 10am - 11am PST

Mia Keeys

Mia Keeys, MA is the first director of health equity policy and advocacy of the American Medical Association’s Center for Health Equity. She is the former policy director of the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust and health policy advisor to Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D-IL).Previously, Mia has also been a Kaiser Family Foundation Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholar; a Fellow for the City of Philadelphia in the Deputy Mayor’s Office for Health and Opportunity; an HIV/AIDS researcher in South Africa; and a U.S. Fulbright Fellow to Indonesia, where she worked on education and public health initiatives on behalf of youth and their families for three years. The National Minority Quality Forum recognizes Mia as a 40 Under 40 Leader in Minority Health. The National Academy of Medicine features Mia’s children’s book on health equity—titled Cole Blue, Full of Valor—in their 2017 national exhibit, “Visualizing Health Equity.” Her work on youth and the imagination is featured in a TEDx Talk, titled “A Racial Imagination Quotient”. Mia holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Psychology from Cheyney University, and a Master of Arts degree in Medical Sociology from Vanderbilt University, where she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow through Meharry Medical College. She is currently a doctoral student at The Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University. Mia is also a creative non-fiction writer, with training from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. She is originally from Philadelphia, PA.

Tuesday, February 9, 2021 | 10am - 11am PST

Vardit Ravitsky

Vardit Ravitsky is Full Professor at the Bioethics Program, School of Public Health, University of Montreal and part-time Senior Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is President of the International Association of Bioethics and Director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics. Her research focuses on the ethics of genomics and reproduction and a variety of topics such as: public funding of In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF); the use of surplus frozen embryos; posthumous reproduction; preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD); gamete donation; epigenetics; prenatal testing, in particular the ethical, social and legal aspects of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT); germline and somatic gene editing; and mitochondrial replacement. She is a 2020 Trudeau Foundation Fellow and Chair of the Foundation’s COVID-19 Impact Committee, as well as Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of the Hastings Center. She is also member of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s (NHGRI) Genomics & Society Working Group.

Dr. Kimani- Paul-Emile

Dr. Kimani Paul-Emile is a Professor of Law, Associate Director and Head of Domestic Programs and Initiatives at Fordham Law School’s Center on Race, Law & Justice, and faculty co-director of the Fordham Law School Stein Center for Law & Ethics. Dr. Paul-Emile specializes in the areas of law & biomedical ethics, health law, antidiscrimination law, and race and the law. Her award-winning scholarship has been published widely in such journals as the Virginia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, George Washington Law Review, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Annals of Internal Medicine, among others. Her co-authored article, Patient and Trainee Experiences with Patient Bias, won the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation’s 2019 John Benson Professionalism Article Prize. For her article, Blackness as Disability?, Dr. Paul-Emile received the Law and Society Association’s 2019 John Hope Franklin Prize, awarded for “exceptional scholarship in the field of Race, Racism and the Law.” Her co-authored article on the clinical, ethical, and legal challenges attendant to dealing with racist patients in the hospital setting has been viewed over 152,000 times, placing it in the 99th percentile of articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and 99th percentile of all medical journals.

Dr. Judy Illes

Dr. Illes is Professor of Neurology and Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics at UBC. She is Director of Neuroethics Canada, and faculty in the Centre for Brain Health and at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. She received her PhD in Hearing and Speech Sciences, and in Neuropsychology at Stanford University, and became one of the pioneers of the field of neuroethics formally established in early 2000. Dr. Illes’ research, teaching and outreach initiatives are devoted to ethical, legal, social and policy challenges at the intersection of the brain sciences and biomedical ethics. She has made groundbreaking contributions to neuroethical thinking for neuroscience discovery and clinical translation, and has made a special commitment to exploring and promoting global and cross-cultural issues at their intersection.

Jason Karlawish

Jason Karlawish is a physician and writer. He cares for patients at the Penn Memory Center, which he co-directs. A Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, his research focuses on issues at the intersections of bioethics, aging and the neurosciences. As leader of the Penn Program for Precision Medicine for the Brain (P3MB) he and his colleagues have investigated the development and translation of Alzheimer’s disease treatments and biomarker-based diagnostics. His essays have appeared in Forbes.com, The Hill, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, STATnews and the Washington Post. His book, The Problem of Alzheimer’s: How Science, Culture and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It (St Martin’s Press 2021), is an account of how Alzheimer’s disease became a crisis and the steps needed to address it.

Anna Wexler

Anna Wexler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the principal investigator of the Wexler Lab, where she studies the ethical, legal, and social issues surrounding emerging technology, with a particular focus on do-it-yourself medicine, direct-to-consumer health products, and neuroethics.