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Meet the IAB's Board of Directors
Caesar Atuire IAB President (Ghana, Africa) 2022-
I am a philosopher and health ethicist at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine where I am Ethics Lead for the MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine. I am also a senior lecturer at the Department of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Ghana.
My interest and work in bioethics are conceptual and empirical. On the former, I work around challenging some of the underlying conceptual frameworks informing bioethics by drawing on philosophical ideas, African and non-African, that address inequity in the relationships that govern current approaches to global health with an eye to new frontiers, decolonization, deimperialization, and pluriversality. In 2019, I co-edited a volume titled Bioethics in Africa, which discusses bioethical problems from an African perspective. I am currently working on a Wellcome Discovery Award to explore, together with a team of colleagues from across the globe, conceptualizations of solidarity and to build a Solidarity Index for ranking global health funders.
At the empirical level, I have worked to design a training package in clinical ethics for nursing trainees in Ghana based on real-life cases. I have also been involved in IRB work and the design and teaching of an MSc in bioethics at the University of Ghana. I have worked on the ethics of mental healthcare, especially in relation to persons who hold cultural and religious beliefs about the mind.
I am a member of WHO’s Covid-19 Ethics and Governance Working Group and member of the Steering Committee of the Global Forum for Bioethics in Research.
Tenzin Wangmo, IAB Vice-President (Switzerland, Europe) 2023-
Tenzin Wangmo is a tenured Senior Researcher and Ph.D. Program Coordinator at the Institute for Biomedical Ethics (IBMB), University of Basel (Switzerland). Tenzin holds a doctoral degree (PhD) in Gerontology from the University of Kentucky (USA) and a B.A. in Biology from Berea College (USA). After six years of highly successful scholarship (publications, teaching, and grant funding) at the post-doctoral level, she had received her Privatdozent (PD) title in Biomedical Ethics. Tenzin has research experience and key scholarship in several topics relevant to medical ethics, aging, and care relationships. Presently, she leads empirical studies exploring the ethical and social implications of new technologies in the care for older persons, the notion of responsibility within transnational family care networks, geriatric healthcare decision-making, and family building at “older” ages. She has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed publications in bioethics, medicine, and gerontology. For the 16th World Congress of Bioethics, Tenzin was the chair and organizer for this conference held in Basel, Switzerland.
Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, IAB Treasurer (Canada, English-speaking North America) 2019-
Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon is a bioethicist and Assistant Professor in the Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. With a background in applied ethics, empirical bioethics, health policy, and the ethics of artificial intelligence, Bélisle-Pipon delves into pressing ethical questions surrounding cutting-edge healthcare technologies. Bélisle-Pipon explores the ethical and societal implications of AI in healthcare, delving deep into the complexities of this rapidly advancing field. Moreover, he actively champions citizen engagement, working tirelessly to foster meaningful dialogue and promote ethical decision-making in the realm of AI ethics. As an advocate for responsible governance, Bélisle-Pipon is also dedicated to developing ethical guidelines that will guide decision-makers in shaping public health policies for the benefit of society as a whole. In his quest for responsible and sustainable patient-centered care, Bélisle-Pipon employs diverse methodologies to tackle ethical challenges and establish fruitful collaborations. His multifaceted approach brings together stakeholders from academia, industry, and the public sector to forge effective partnerships aimed at transforming the healthcare landscape. His dedication to a patient-centric approach permeates every facet of his work, ensuring that ethical considerations remain at the forefront of healthcare practices. As an educator, Bélisle-Pipon is dedicated to equipping students with a strong foundation in bioethics and fostering critical thinking skills. He guides students to develop great scholarship and cultivate versatile research and professional abilities.
Voo Teck Chuan Communications Officer (Singapore, Western Pacific) 2022-
Dr Voo Teck Chuan is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics (CBmE), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS). He studied Philosophy in NUS and did his PhD in Bioethics and Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Manchester. Teck Chuan is Director of Graduate Education for CBmE and its role as a World Health Organization (WHO) Bioethics Collaborating Centre. He researches on ethical issues in health care and policy and has written more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and two co-edited books. He has obtained over SGD $3million in competitive research grants. He is Co-PI of a project to develop a Southeast Asian bioethics research network, funded by the Wellcome Trust, and is NUS PI for the Epidemic Ethics network, in collaboration with the Oxford Ethox Centre and the WHO. He is an editorial board member of Asian Bioethics Review and Public Health Ethics (forthcoming), and the Springer Nature book series on Philosophy and Medicine, and Public Health and Health Policy Ethics.
Teck Chuan is committed to service to the field of bioethics and its practices. He was recently appointed to the Singapore Bioethics Advisory Committee and the National Medical Ethics Committee. He sits on two hospital ethics committee in Singapore; the Ministry of Health (MOH) Assisted Reproduction Services Working Committee; the National Healthcare Group Research Ethics Committee; MOH Advisory Committee on Restricted Human Biomedical Research; and the National Advisory Committee for Laboratory Animal Research. He is on the steering committee of the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research and the ethics advisory board for UNITE4TB. He has served the WHO in the development of clinical guidelines, and ethics guidance relating to epidemics and public health emergencies. Teck Chuan is a member of the WHO COVID-19 Ethics and Governance Working Group.
Nancy S. Jecker, (USA, English-speaking North America) 2019-
Nancy S. Jecker, PhD is a Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She holds Adjunct Professorships at the University of Washington’s School of Law, Department of Global Health, and Department of Philosophy. Dr. Jecker is a Visiting Professor at both the University of Johannesburg Department of Philosophy and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Centre for Bioethics. She is a Fulbright U.S. Scholar (2021/22); two time recipient of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science international fellowship (2021/2022 and 2018/2019); and three time Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship awardee (2021/22, 2018/19, 1987/88). Dr. Jecker was a Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore (2018); Scholar-in-residence at the Brocher Foundation (2017); Visiting Professor at The University of Bucharest Research Institute (2017); and keynote speaker at the Israeli Ministry of Health (2017). Dr. Jecker’s research explores global bioethics, justice and moral philosophy. Her research spans a range of topics, most notably healthcare allocation; capabilities and human dignity; sub-Saharan African philosophy; intergenerational ethics; and personhood. Dr. Jecker has published over 200 articles and 4 books. Her most recent book, Ending Midlife Bias: New Values for Old Age (Oxford University Press, 2020), coins the term 'midlife bias' to refer to the privileging of midlife values across the lifespan.
Aasim Ahmad (Pakistan, Eastern Mediterranean) 2019-2027
Aasim Ahmad is a nephrologist with a Masters’ degree in bioethics from the University of Toronto. He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer (Bioethics) and Founder Member of Bioethics Group at the Aga Khan University Karachi, Pakistan. He also serves on many research ethics boards including the Ethic Review Board of Médecins Sans Frontières.
Ainsley Newson (Australia, Western Pacific) 2022-
Ainsley Newson Professor of Bioethics at Sydney Health Ethics, University of Sydney, Australia. She has worked in bioethics for over 20 years, holding combined teaching/research academic positions in Australia and the United Kingdom. Ainsley’s research critically considers ethical issues in genomics and human reproductive technologies, specifically how they can be used well across research, clinical and population health settings. She has led bioethics programs of work within large initiatives such as the Australian Genomics Health Alliance and has been funded by leading funders in Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe. Ainsley has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and commentaries. She teaches bioethics in the Sydney Master of Bioethics and guest lectures medical students and other postgraduates. Ainsley is a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee and the New South Wales Health Ethics Advisory Panel, and is also active in the Regulatory and Ethics Working Group of the Global Alliance on Genomics and Health. In 2022 Ainsley founded AusGenELSI, a network to bring people together to consider ethical, legal and social issues in genomics in Australia.
Carla Saenz (Peru, Latin America) 2019-2027
Carla Saenz is the Regional Bioethics Advisor at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), which is the World’s Health Organization’s Regional Office for the Americas. She is responsible for PAHO’s Regional Program on Bioethics, which supports on bioethics to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. An elected fellow of the Hastings Center, she has authored numerous publications on different areas of bioethics, coedited the book Public Health Ethics: Cases Spanning the Globe, and contributed to several ethics guidance documents. She has been responsible of the development of PAHO’s zika ethics guidance, and is in the Steering Committee of the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research. Carla holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and, before joining PAHO, she was at the Department of Bioethics at Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and in the faculty in the Philosophy Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dorcas Kamuya (Kenya, Africa) 2017-2026
Prof. Dorcas Kamuya is the Head of Health Systems and Research Ethics (HSRE) Department at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya; and Associate professor at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford. Dorcas’s research includes examining ethical and social-cultural issues on complex topics including bio-banking, Controlled Human Infection Studies (HIS), pandemic preparedness and response in LMICs. She is also examining the value of community and public engagement in health research, and ethical dilemmas for frontline research workers. Her current research examines how research institutions and review systems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) responded to COVID19 pandemic, and what that can inform on preparedness, responsiveness and resilience of health research systems based in SSA. She is co-leading an exchange network that is examining decolonization in global health research, among other contributions. She is a member of several scientific committees and boards -within Kenya, regionally and internationally.
Gustavo Ortiz-Millán (Mexico, Latin America) 2023-
Gustavo Ortiz-Millán is research-professor at the Institute of Philosophical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and member of the National System of Researchers of Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Columbia University in New York. He has taught philosophy at Columbia University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and UNAM. He has also been a visiting researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and at Duke University. He has been a Fulbright Scholar twice. He is the author of the books The Morality of Abortion, and Abortion, Democracy and Empowerment, both of them published in Spanish. He has co-edited several books, the most recent of which are Mind, Language, and Morality (with J. Cruz, Routledge, 2018) and COVID-19 and Bioethics (in Spanish, with M. Medina, UNAM Press, 2021). He is also the author of more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and critical book reviews. His articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Global Bioethics, the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Revista de Bioética y Derecho, the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, Dilemata, among others. He has also published on topics of metaethics, moral psychology and epistemology.
In bioethics he has worked on abortion and reproductive health ethics. He has collaborated with several sexual and reproductive rights organizations, and has been active in the process of decriminalization of abortion in Mexico. He has also worked on the field of animal ethics, where he has also collaborated with animal rights organizations. Recently he has done some work on medical ethics; he participated in the team that wrote the allocation guide for scarce medical resources used by the public health sector in Mexico during the pandemic.
Harald Schmidt (USA, English-speaking North America) 2022-
Harald Schmidt is an Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. His research centers on improving opportunity and reducing disadvantage for marginalized populations in health promotion and healthcare priority setting. In the US’ Covid-19 response, he proposed a novel paradigm for promoting social and racial equity simultaneously by integrating disadvantage indices in allocation frameworks (widely adopted in the majority of states’ vaccine allocation plans). Current research explores how such indices could be used to promote equity outside of the pandemic context. Other work seeks to make constructive proposals for advancing the often polarized debate around personal responsibility for health, focusing chiefly on smoking cessation, weight loss, breast cancer screening, and, currently, medication adherence monitoring (see publications here). He initiated a range of equity-promoting measures as Co-Chair of the IAB’s 2020 World Congress, and hopes to expand these further with the Board.
Josephine Johnston (New Zealand, Western Pacific) 2023-
Kia ora koutou! I am a bioethics researcher and medical law lecturer from Aotearoa/New Zealand. I'm an interdisciplinary and collaborative bioethicist with training in law and bioethics and appointments at The University of Otago and The Hastings Center (remote).
My research focuses on ethical, legal, and policy issues in medicine and science, with a particular focus on human reproduction, psychiatry, genetics, and neuroscience. I teach medical law and ethics to a range of undergraduate and postgraduate students, including medical, dental, and pharmacy students. I am also a member of the Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis.
My scholarly work has been published in medical, scientific, policy, law, and bioethics journals. I am co-editor of Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Trust and Integrity in Biomedical Research: The Case of Financial Conflicts of Interest (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). I highly value cross disciplinary and public engagement, frequently writing and speaking for health professionals, policy makers, and the public.
Kevin Behrens (RSA, Africa) 2023-
I am a Professor of bioethics and Director of the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa.
In my role as a teacher, I have worked with my colleagues to transform our curriculum by teaching African relational moral theory alongside the more familiar theories and by including significant bioethics works done by African scholars.
As a researcher, a major emphasis in my work is on applying African moral philosophical notions to ethical questions. Bioethics discourse and our normative understanding can be much enriched by indigenous moral perspectives. In particular, the notions of solidarity, harmonious relationships, restorative justice and of moral personhood, emphasized in much African normative work, have the potential to deeply enrich bioethics.
I previously served on the Research Ethics Committee of the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and as Editor-in-Chief of the African Journal of Business Ethics. I have been a clinical bioethics consultant to the Lenmed Hospital Group since 2020.
Vina Vaswani (India, South East Asia) 2022-
With background in Forensic Medicine and cultivating skills in bioethics through Erasmus Mundus Program in Europe and PhD from Dublin City University, I believe in being a lifelong learner, so as to be a good teacher-leader. As a founder Director of the Centre for Ethics, I started the first Postgraduate Diploma in Bioethics and Medical Ethics, and soon followed it up with Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Ethics (collaboration with Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany). I am Program Director of the Yenepoya University-Fogarty International Center Research Ethics Master’s Program for India, supported by NIH Grant (1R25TW010305). The two PG Diplomas and Masters were the first bioethics, clinical ethics and research ethics academic programs in India. Following the tragic Mangalore air crash, I underwent training in S. Korea and Thailand to start the first-ever PG Diploma in Forensic Anthropology and Odontology in collaboration with Equipo Argentino Anthropologie de Forense, Argentina with focus on Disaster Victim Identification. As a member of advisory panel, I have contributed to “The Minnesota protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Deaths (2016)” the Revised United Nations manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions. My PhD research has been in Ethics of Forensic Medicine in Disasters where I have used the grounded theory approach to explicate ethical principles applicable to the handling of dead bodies during forensic services. In 2018, I was awarded the GFBR travel fellowship to Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics to develop a white paper of “Ethical Issues with Controlled Human Infection Model Studies in India” under the mentorship of Profs Jeffrey Kahn and Joseph Ali. Centre has co-hosted National Bioethics Conference in India along with the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics in 2020.
Cristina Richie, (2024-2028) (Scotland, Europe)
Cristina Richie, PhD is a Lecturer of Ethics of Technology at the University of Edinburgh and Cohort Lead for the MSc in Data and Artificial Intelligence Ethics at the University of Edinburgh’s Futures Institute. She was previously a Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics of Technology at Delft University of Technology and had a decade-long career in the United States which included a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies at the Brody School of Medicine and a semester as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.Her research is driven by a global vision of clean, just, and ethical health care and technology through the development of strategies and policies. In addition to her monographs, Principles of Green Bioethics: Sustainability in Health Care (Michigan State University Press, 2019); Environmental Ethics and Medical Reproduction (Oxford University Press, 2024), and edited volumes, Environmental Bioethics: Theory and Practice for Environmentally Sustainable Health Care (Routledge, 2024); The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Bioethics (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), Dr. Richie is the author of over sixty articles in journals including Nature Climate Change, The Lancet, and the American Journal of Bioethics. She is the joint-Editor of Global Bioethics, the Head of the Netherlands Unit (Rotterdam) of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics, and a Board Member of the European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care.https://www.technomoralfutures.uk/faculty-research-database/cristina-richiehttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FAQ_PUYAAAAJ
Past Directors
Vardit Ravitsky, IAB Vice-President (Canada, English-speaking North America) 2015-2024
Vardit Ravitsky is Full Professor at the Bioethics Program, School of Public Health, University of Montreal and Senior Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is Director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics, a 2020 Trudeau Foundation Fellow, as well as Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of the Hastings Center. She is member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute Advisory Board for the Institute of Genetics. Her research focuses on the ethics of genomics and reproduction and is funded by Canada’s leading funding agencies. She published over 180 articles and commentaries on bioethical issues.
Ignacio Mastroleo (2019-2023) (Argentina, Latin America)
Dr Ignacio Mastroleo works on research ethics, medical ethics and theories of justice. His main lines of inquiry are ethics of innovative medical practice, post-trial responsibilities and research integrity (see Google scholar and ORCID profiles). He is a researcher from National Scientific Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) and Chief of Lecturers in Ethics at the Department of Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He conducts, with Felicitas Holzer, the Bioethics Module of the International Master/PhD Program in Biomedical Sciences (IMBS University of Freiburg, Germany and UBA). Since 2018, he is the Director of the BioThera Research Institute for Philosophy of Translational Medicine (Program of Bioethics, FLACSO Argentina, Collaborating Center of PAHO-WHO). He won The Manuel Velasco Suarez Award for Excellence in Bioethics (2014) awarded by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO-WHO). He has been visiting researcher at the Ethox Centre (2014), the HeLEX Centre (2016) and the Uehiro Centre (2019), Oxford University, UK. He was also a member of the Post-Trial Responsibility Workgroup of MRCT (Multi-Regional Clinical Trials) Center of Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, United States (2015-2017).
Marcel Verweij (2015-2023) (Netherlands, Europe)
Marcel Verweij is Professor of Philosophical Ethics at the Ethics Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Current research interests include the ethics of vaccination and infectious disease control; and solidarity, health inequity, and planetary health. He has fulfilled a variety of advisory roles on ethics of public health care, for example currently in the committee that advises on the contents of the basic health care insurance in the Netherlands. Late 2023 MITpress will publish the monography Inducing Immunity? The justification of immunization policies in times of vaccine hesitancy (co-authored with Roland Pierik). Marcel Verweij and Angus Dawson jointly initiated the IAB network and OUP journal Public Health Ethics.
Thalia Arawi (2015-2023) (Lebanon, Eastern Mediterranean)
Dr. Thalia (Talia) Arawi, (BA, Sociology, MA, Political and Moral Philosophy) PhDs (Philosophy and Bioethics) is Founding Director of the Salim El-Hoss Bioethics and Professionalism Program (SHBPP) at the American University of Beirut Faculty of Medicine and Medical Center. The SHBPP is the first and only Regional Bioethics and Professionalism Program in the Arab Region and was recently announced as the first WHO Collaborating Center for Ethics in the Arab Region. Dr. Arawi is the first Arab to specialize in Bioethics. She is also the Clinical Bioethicist, Clinical Ethics Consultant and Certified Healthcare Mediator at AUBMC where she established the first Bed-Side Clinical Ethics Consultation Service in the Arab Region. Dr. Arawi is the first Arab member to be appointed on the board of the International Association of Bioethics and is also member of the American Society of Bioethics, the Canadian Society of Bioethics, the Provincial Health Ethics Network and, the UK Clinical Ethics Network, to mention but a few. Dr. Arawi is also the first Arab consultant at the Center for Conflict Resolution in Healthcare LLC, Memphis TN and member of the WHO COVID-19 Ethics Working Group and was appointed as Liaison Officer and Bioethics Focal Point to the Prime Minister. Dr. Arawi published the first of its kind Bioethics Dictionary in Arabic with Dr. Ruhi Ballbaki (dar al Ilm lil malayin publishers, 2018) and recently published a book, Towards a Post Flexnerian Revolution: Graduating the Virtuous Physician, AUB Press, 2022. Her third book, 77 Days with Rumi (Dar Nelson) was released in November 2022. She has participated in a multitude of national, regional and international conferences and has several publications on bioethics. Her research interests are mainly in the areas of clinical ethics, biomedical ethics, philosophy of medicine, humanitarian medicine, ethics and refugees, access to Healthcare, bioethics in conflict zones, ethics and mental health and medical education.
Yali Cong (2015-2023) (China, Western Pacific)
Yali Cong is a Professor in Medical Ethics, Dean of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Law, Peking University Health Science Center.
She was trained in biology during undergraduate study in Beijing Normal University, and got her PhD degree in Philosophy of Science and Technology in 1995 from Renmin University of China. She joined Peking University Health Science Center (formal Beijing Medical University) since 1995 and has been teaching medical ethics for clinical medical students for more than 25 years. She has a wide range of research interest in Research Ethics, Global Public Health Ethics and Medical Professionalism. She has published about 100 papers in both English and Chinese in the field of Bioethics and works actively as PI in the areas of medical professionalism, human subject protection and medical ethics education. Currently she and her team are working on the ethics of health big data.
Prof. Cong took her position as PKU IRB Chair between 2010 to 2020, leading the institutional capacity building and policy-making in regards to human subject protection at Peking University. She is the current Chair of China Medical Ethics Association between 2020 and 2023.
She was the Fellow of Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, the University of Chicago in 2002, and she visited Utretch University in 2015 and Duke University in 2010 as visiting scholar. She has participated in international organizations, includidng as REB member of Médecins Sans Frontières, member of Lancet Commission of Value of Death, etc.