Program Directors
Steven Joffe, MD, MPH
Founders Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy
Professor of Pediatrics
Steven Joffe (he/him) is a pediatric oncologist and bioethicist who is currently the Art and Ilene Penn Professor of Medical Ethics & Health Policy and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Dr. Joffe's research addresses the many ethical challenges that arise in the conduct of clinical and translational investigation. He has led NIH-, PCORI- and foundation-funded projects to study the roles and responsibilities of principal investigators in multicenter randomized trials, accountability in the clinical research enterprise, children’s capacity to engage in research decisions, return of individual genetic results to participants in epidemiologic cohort studies, the integration of whole-exome sequencing technologies into the clinical care of cancer patients, strategies for diagnosis of germline risk among young adults with cancer, and the nature and challenges of learning health systems.
Dr. Joffe attended Harvard College, received his medical degree from the University of California at San Francisco, and received his public health degree from UC Berkeley. He trained in pediatrics at UCSF and undertook fellowship training in pediatric hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Current Trainees
Katharine Callahan, MD
Fellow in Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics
Katharine received her MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2016 and completed her pediatrics residency at Columbia University in 2019. She is currently a neonatology fellow at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Her research has focused on how genetics affects clinical care, from the perspective of doctors and patients. Her most recent work explored ways to enhance physician’s understanding of disability and how learning about a patient's life beyond a genetic diagnosis can enhance medical care. Katharine will combine the Neonatology and ELSI fellowships and plans to investigate the ethical and social dynamics of genetic testing in the neonatal intensive care unit.
LaKisha David, PhD
Fellow in Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics
LaKisha David successfully defended her PhD in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She studies human development and family aspects of genetic genealogy. Her research examines processes of family identity development and ethnic identity development among African American adults who use direct-to-consumer genetic genealogy testing services to engage in social interactions with genetic relatives from Africa. Her research also examines the perceptions of Ghanaians interacting with African Americans identified as the genetic descendants of their ancestors who were taken away during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. From 2013 to 2016, she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign focusing on international development in Ghana. As an ELSI post-doctoral fellow at Penn, she plans to explore ethical, legal, social, and technical implications of genetic relatedness among Ghanaian and African American families separated during the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Rebecca Mueller
Fellow in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics
Rebecca Mueller is a historian of medicine, medical ethnographer, and licensed genetic counselor. She received her master’s degree in Genetic Counseling from Arcadia University and completed her PhD in the History & Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation “The Genome and the Biome: Cystic Fibrosis @ Six Feet Apart,” uses cystic fibrosis as a case study of new diagnostic technologies, risk, and sociality. Her next project investigates the impact of genetic diagnoses on individuals’ conceptions of time and the future, intervening in the concept of a child’s right to an open future and adding to the nascent literature on disability and temporality. In addition, Rebecca will undertake research on the delivery and scaling of genetic counseling services in oncology in collaboration with Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center. She is also a course director for ethics in Penn’s new Genetic Counseling Program
Kate Saylor
Fellow in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics
Kate Saylor received her PhD in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is interested in fairness in genetics research and genetic medicine and in how normative values and scientific evidence shape healthcare decisions. At Penn, she hopes to work on understanding and overcoming disparities in genetic healthcare utilization. Her dissertation is on fairness considerations for cost-effectiveness analysis and on the cost-effectiveness of genetic screening in the general population. She has also done empirical and normative work on disparities and inclusion in research and genetic medicine. Before graduate school, Kate worked at the National Institutes of Health as a science policy analyst from 2010-2016. And in some distant past, she studied the development of the receptor cells of the inner ear. Kate plays violin, and she likes to hike and bake.
Naomi Scheinerman
Fellow in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics
Naomi Scheinerman is a political theorist, focusing on democratic theory, whose research primarily concerns inclusive institutional decision-making in matters of science, technology, and medicine. Her current project seeks to identify, moralize, and prescribe solutions to the problem of exploitation across numerous fields and industries. Prior to joining the Department at Penn, she was an AI Initiative Joint Fellow-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and received her PhD from Yale University's Department of Political Science, where she endorsed using randomly selected bodies of lay individuals as promising institutional avenues for democratic participation in regulating new and emerging biotechnologies, particularly gene editing tools, as well as artificial intelligence applications and algorithmic designs. Naomi also worked as a research assistant at The Hastings Center and received her BA in philosophy and political science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Trainers
Research interests
Dr. Bradbury's research focuses on: a) the delivery of genetic services, b) the implications of genetic medicine for children and adolescents and c) Ethical, Legal and Social Issues in genetic medicine.
Dr. Clapp is a linguistic and medical anthropologist who uses qualitative methods and social scientific theory to develop empirically tractable frameworks for examining medical ethics. His empirical work focuses on both clinical and research ethics. In the clinical space, he studies medical decision making in elective surgery and intensive care, characterizing how decisions about the initiation or withdrawal of treatment are connected to broader social and cultural processes that must be accounted for to develop informed and impactful ethical models.
Research interests
Dr. Domchek is a nationally recognized expert in breast cancer genetics, breast cancer risk and prevention as well as breast cancer treatment. Her research interests include further understanding breast cancer susceptibility genes and how to target such genetic mutations for improved cancer treatment.
Research interests
Dr. Farah's research interests include the effects of childhood poverty on brain development, the expanding use of neuropsychiatric medications by healthy people for brain enhancement, novel uses of brain imaging, in e.g. legal, diagnostic and educational contexts, the many ways in which neuroscience is changing the way we think of ourselves as physical, mental, moral and spiritual beings.
Chris Feudtner is a pediatrician, clinical investigator, and ethicist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania who focuses on improving the lives of children with complex chronic conditions and their families.
Dr. Karlawish is the co-director of the Penn Memory Center. A physician and writer, he investigates and writes about issues at the intersection of ethics, policy and the neurosciences. His work has a particular focus on older adults with neurodegenerative diseases. He has investigated the development and translation of biomarker-based Alzheimer’s disease treatments and diagnostics, informed consent and supported decision making, quality of life, research and treatment decision making, mind perception and voting by persons with cognitive impairment and residents of long-term care facilities.
Dr. Largent’s research combines qualitative, quantitative, legal, and conceptual methods, examines ethical and regulatory issues in human subjects research as well as the translation of research findings into clinical practice with a focus on dementia. She has particular interests in the role of care partners in facilitating clinical trials for persons with dementia, in how to support decision making for individuals with impaired decision-making capacity, and in increasing diversity among participants in dementia trials.
Dr. Fernandez Lynch is a bioethicist and attorney with expertise in the ethics and regulation of biomedical research and in Food and Drug Administration policy.
Research interests
Dr. Moreno's research interests include history of bioethics, politics and the life sciences, neuroethics, and history and philosophy of social science.
Dr. McCoy trained as a political scientist and bioethicist. He studies ethical issues in health policy making and the governance of health care organizations. His research focuses on conflicts of interest in the health care arena and the ethics of public engagement in health research and policy making.
Dr. Roth’s research examines how social processes challenge racial and ethnic boundaries and transform classification systems, as well as how these processes change conceptions of the nature of race. She has examined how social processes like intermarriage, immigration, and receiving personalized genomic information through genetic ancestry testing influence the way people think about and classify their own race and ethnicity, as well as that of other people.
Dr. Wexler is the principal investigator of the Wexler Lab, where she studies the ethical, legal, and social issues surrounding emerging technology. She is particularly interested in do-it-yourself (DIY) medicine, citizen science, direct-to-consumer (DTC) health products, online patient communities, neuroscience technology, and alternative neurotherapies.