Stavros Niarchos Foundation Bioethics Academy

Effy Vayena 
Chair in Bioethics, ETH Zurich

Effy Vayena is a Professor of Bioethics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) and renowned expert at the intersection of medicine, data, and ethics. Her work focuses on important societal issues of data and technology as they relate to scientific progress and how it is or should be applied to public and personal health.

Vayena completed her education as a social historian with a PhD in Medical History from the University of Minnesota. A keen interest in health policy has led her to work with the World Health Organization. Upon her return to academia, Vayena was awarded a professorship by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She founded the Health Ethics and Policy Lab to tackle pressing questions that arise through technological advances such as genomic technologies and big data analytics in healthcare and research.

She received her habilitation from the University of Zurich in the field of bioethics and policy and has been appointed a Visiting Professor at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where she was previously a Fellow. She is a member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and chairs the Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications advisory group of the Swiss Personalized Health Network, a national infrastructure and research program aiming to advance personalized health in Switzerland.

Vayena is a leading expert in the dynamic and diverse field of health data and ethics, successfully leveraging her academic work and international network to promote a fruitful debate about the ethics of health in the digital age. She has previously worked with the Wellcome Trust, OECD, Commonwealth Fund, Chatham House, and academic institutions and governments around the world. Since May 2021 she is the chair of the Hellenic National Bioethics and Technoethics Commission.

Joseph Ali, JD

• Associate Director for Global Programs
  Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
• Associate Professor, Department of International Health
  Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Joe Ali’s research and teaching engages a range of challenges in domestic and global health ethics. This includes empirical and normative work in U.S. and international research ethics, and projects that address the implications of emerging global mobile and digital technologies as applied in the context of health research, public health programs, and disease surveillance. He is particularly interested in how values are expressed, represented, prioritized, preserved and influenced in the context of digital technologies.

As core faculty and associate director for global programs at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, he works with colleagues at JHU and other institutions internationally to advance the development of multidisciplinary research, training and service partnerships in bioethics. Ali is committed in his work to collaboratively supporting the capacity of scholars from resource constrained countries and settings to lead bioethics research, teaching and practice on issues of local importance. He has been involved in establishing and operating NIH Fogarty-funded non-degree, master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral programs in bioethics at Johns Hopkins and with partners in Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Botswana and Malaysia. He also co-leads the Wellcome-funded Oxford University-Johns Hopkins University Global Infectious Disease Ethics (GLIDE) Collaborative which supports research and training between the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Oxford Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities to address emerging issues involving ethics and infectious disease.

Ali serves as a member of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the JHSPH Faculty Senate. He is Associate Editor for the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics and an Editorial Board member for the journal Accountability in Research. Ali teaches courses in international research ethics and public health ethics at JHU.

Dr. Beauchamp is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He took graduate degrees from Yale University and The Johns Hopkins University, where he received his PhD in 1970. He then joined the faculty of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown in 1970, and in the mid-1970s accepted a joint appointment at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. In 1975, he joined the staff of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, where he drafted the bulk of The Belmont Report (1978) at the U. S. National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Beauchamp’s research interests are in the ethics of human-subjects research, the ethics of animal research ethics, the place of universal principles and rights in biomedical ethics, methods of bioethics, Hume and the history of modern philosophy, and business ethics. Beauchamp co-edited (with George G. Brenkert) The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics, and edited a 1,000-page book of original articles, The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Animals, which is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art presentation of the field not possible until very recently.

In 2004, Dr. Beauchamp was given the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) in recognition of outstanding contributions and significant publications in bioethics and the humanities. In 2003, he was presented Georgetown University’s Career Recognition Award, which is awarded to a faculty member in the University each year for distinguished research across a career. In 1994, Indiana University awarded Beauchamp its first “Memorial Award for Furthering Greater Understanding and Exchange of Opinions between the Professions of Law and Medicine.”  In 2010 he was presented the Henry Beecher Award of the Hastings Center, New York, for a lifetime of contributions to research ethics and other areas of bioethics. In 2011 Beauchamp was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Research Ethics by Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R).

Alessandro Blasimme 
Senior Scientist, Bioethics

Alessandro Blasimme is a reader in bioethics at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich). He has held research appointments at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) as well as the University of Zürich, before joining ETH Zürich. In 2013 he received a Fulbright-Schuman Scholarship to undertake research at the Program on Science, Technology and Society, Harvard University (USA) where he was a fellow. His research focuses on ethical and policy issues in biomedical innovation and biotechnology. His areas of expertise include translational medicine, precision medicine, regenerative medicine, genetic engineering, digital health and ageing. He has published widely in leading bioethics and medical journals and he is a principal investigator in national as well as international research consortia.

He is a visiting professor in bioethics at La Sapienza University of Rome (2022).

Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH, is the founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and its director from 1995 until 2016. She was the inaugural Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director (2014-­2016) and currently is, and has been since 1995, the inaugural Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics. Dr. Faden’s research focuses on structural justice theory and on national and global challenges in Public Health and Science policy, food and agriculture, women’s health, including the rights and interests of pregnant women, health systems design and priority setting, and advances in science and technology. Currently Dr. Faden is working at the intersection of structural justice and the COVID-19 response, primarily in vaccine policy and K-12 education. Her latest book, with Madison Powers, is Structural Injustice: Power, Advantage, and Human Rights.

Nancy E. Kass, ScD 

• Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health;
• Professor of Health Policy and Management;
• Deputy Director for Public Health at the Berman Institute of Bioethics

Nancy Kass, ScD, is thethe Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health at Johns Hopkins, where she is also both the Deputy Director for Public Health in the Berman Institute of Bioethics and Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Kass conducts empirical work in bioethics and health policy. Her publications are primarily in the field of U.S. and international research ethics, HIV/AIDS ethics policy, public health ethics (including ethics and obesity prevention and ethics and public health preparedness), and ethics and the learning healthcare system. In 2009-2010, Dr. Kass was based in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was working with the World Health Organization (WHO) Ethics Review Committee Secretariat.

Dr. Kass is coeditor (with Ruth Faden) of HIV, AIDS and Childbearing: Public Policy, Private Lives (Oxford University Press, 1996).

She has served as consultant to the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Kass currently serves as the Chair of the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Central IRB; she previously co-chaired the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Committee to develop Recommendations for Informed Consent Documents for Cancer Clinical Trials and served on the NCI’s central IRB. Current research projects examine improving informed consent in human research, ethical guidance development for Ebola and other infectious outbreaks, and ethics and learning health care. Dr. Kass teaches the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s course on U.S. and International Research Ethics and Integrity, she served as the director of the School’s PhD program in bioethics and health policy from its inception until 2016, and she has directed (with Adnan Hyder) the Johns Hopkins Fogarty African Bioethics Training Program since its inception in 2000. Dr. Kass is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) and an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center.

Anna Mastroianni, JD, MPH

• Research Professor

Anna Mastroianni, JD, MPH, joined the Berman Institute as a Research Professor and core faculty member in 2022. She was previously Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law and Associate Director of the university’s Institute for Public Health Genetics and held additional faculty appointments in the UW’s School of Public Health and School of Medicine. Before joining the UW faculty, she worked as a practicing health care attorney and served in a number of legal and governmental policy positions in Washington, D.C. Her scholarly work examines the intersection of law, bioethics, public health, and health policy, with special emphasis on the legal and ethical challenges arising in research with pregnant women, the use of genetic technologies in public health, reproductive rights, and family building through assisted reproductive technologies.

Professor Mastroianni is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognized for her contributions to health policy, law, and bioethics. She serves on consensus, advisory,  and oversight committees, both nationally and internationally. For the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, that work has included examining:  ethics and policy for oversight of social sciences research, policies for the National Immunization Program‘s research procedures and data sharing, ethical and policy issues in the introduction of mitochondria replacement techniques, and ethics of health standards for long-duration space flight.

• Professor, ETH Zurich

Kelly Ormond is a genetic counselor (US ABGC certified) and ELSI researcher.  She received her MS in Genetic Counseling from Northwestern University (1994) and a post-​graduate certificate in Clinical Medical Ethics from the MacLean Center at the University of Chicago (2001).  She joined the Health Ethics and Policy Lab as a Senior Scientist in February 2021, and is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Genetics at Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford University, California, USA .

Prior to joining ETH, Kelly practiced as a clinical genetic counselor in the United States for >25 years, gaining experience in reproductive genetics, teratology, pediatric/medical genetics, adult neurogenetics, cancer genetics and primary care applications of genetic testing.  She has spent over 20 years educating MS level genetic counselors as the training program director at Northwestern University (Chicago, IL 1999-​2007) and Stanford University (California 2007-​2020), including teaching courses in medical genetics, counseling skills, ethics and research skills.  She has served on appointed committees and boards for many US national genetics organizations (ASHG, NSGC, ACMG), and currently serves on the ESHG Program Committee.  She is also the current President of the Transnational Alliance for Genetic Counseling (TAGC).

While at Stanford, Kelly worked as a faculty member within the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics (SCBE),  primarily participating in bioethics research about the intersection between genetics and ethics, particularly around the translation of new genetic technologies (such as genome sequencing, non-​invasive prenatal diagnosis and gene editing) into clinical practice. She also served on the hospital ethics committee at Stanford from 2008-​2020.  Kelly’s recent research focuses on patient decision making, the role of uncertainty in decision making, consent and disclosure of genetic test results, personalized medicine, and the interface between genetics and disability.

Theodoros Trokanas
Faculty, Open University of Cyprus

Theodoros Trokanas was born in Thessaloniki. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Law of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (200o), a Master’s degree in “Human rights and protection of humanity” in a private law specialty from the University of Dijon (France) (2003) and a PhD in Civil Law (Family Law) from the Faculty of Law of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2011).

From 2011 to 2013 he taught courses in Civil Law at the Department of Accounting and Finance of the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. From 2013 to 2017 as a Lecturer and next as an Assistant Professor at the School of Law of European University of Cyprus in Nicosia he taught courses in General Principles of Civil Law, Family Law, Law of Succession and Medical Law. From 2017-2020 he was a Scientific Collaborator at Hellenic Open University (School of Social Sciences). He is currently Adjunct Faculty at Open University of Cyprus, teaching in Bioethics and Medical Ethics postgraduate program. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Interdepartmental Postgraduate Program “Contemporary medical acts: Legal Regulation and Bioethical Dimension” of the Departments of Medicine and Dentistry, the School of Law and the Department of Theology of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, as well as at the Interinstitutional Graduate Studies Program “Critical Thinking and Soft Skills in Biomedical Sciences”, of the Department of Medicine of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Department of Primary Education, Faculty of Education of University of Western Macedonia.

Since 2020 he has been a national tutor in HELP online course in “Key human rights principles in Biomedicine” of the Council of Europe as well as a member of European Society for Reproduction and Ethics (ESHRE) and European network on Health, Law and Bioethics (HeaLaB EuroNet). He is a member of Laboratory for the Research of Medical Law and Bioethics at the Faculty of Law of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, a Board Member of Society for the Study of Medical Law And Bioethics, and an external Member of Research Ethics and Conduct Committee of Ionian University.

He is the author of 3 books “Human reproduction, Individual autonomy and its limits” (Sakkoulas Publications, 2011), “The Cypriot Law on Medically Assisted Reproduction”(Sakkoulas Publications, 2016) and “Error in motive in Civil Code”(Sakkoulas Publications, 2022) as well as of numerous articles in family law, law of succession and medical law.

He has been a practising lawyer since 2002, a member of the Bar Association of Thessaloniki, and since 2018 he has delivered professional training seminars on the General Data Protection Regulation.

Effy Vayena 
Chair in Bioethics, ETH Zurich

Effy Vayena is a Professor of Bioethics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) and renowned expert at the intersection of medicine, data, and ethics. Her work focuses on important societal issues of data and technology as they relate to scientific progress and how it is or should be applied to public and personal health.

Vayena completed her education as a social historian with a PhD in Medical History from the University of Minnesota. A keen interest in health policy has led her to work with the World Health Organization. Upon her return to academia, Vayena was awarded a professorship by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She founded the Health Ethics and Policy Lab to tackle pressing questions that arise through technological advances such as genomic technologies and big data analytics in healthcare and research.

She received her habilitation from the University of Zurich in the field of bioethics and policy and has been appointed a Visiting Professor at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where she was previously a Fellow. She is a member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and chairs the Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications advisory group of the Swiss Personalized Health Network, a national infrastructure and research program aiming to advance personalized health in Switzerland.

Vayena is a leading expert in the dynamic and diverse field of health data and ethics, successfully leveraging her academic work and international network to promote a fruitful debate about the ethics of health in the digital age. She has previously worked with the Wellcome Trust, OECD, Commonwealth Fund, Chatham House, and academic institutions and governments around the world. Since May 2021 she is the chair of the Hellenic National Bioethics and Technoethics Commission.