Participants

Jordan Amadio, M.D., M.B.A. is a practicing neurosurgeon, the Innovation Fellow of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, and a founding partner of NeuroLaunch, a pioneering neuroscience venture accelerator.

Since the founding of NeuroLaunch in 2014, the organization has facilitated investments in 11 brain tech companies, the onboarding of over 150 mentors, and the worldwide growth of a neurotechnology startup community.

Dr. Amadio is a graduate of Princeton University, where he received an honors degree in Physics and was a Barry Goldwater Scholar. In 2004, he was simultaneously awarded the Kusaka Memorial Prize in Physics and the Taylor Prize in Physics. He earned his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School, where he was a research fellow in neurogenetics and was selected to complete his training in the Health Sciences and Technology (HST) program co-administered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also among the first cohort of physicians to graduate with a concurrent Master’s in Business Administration (with Distinction) from Harvard Business School. He completed his training in Neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, where he served as Chief Resident in 2016-17.

Dr. Amadio’s professional experience includes leadership in the areas of neurosurgery, neuroethics, bioengineering innovation, and health entrepreneurship. His scientific publications include research on electrolyte disturbances after pituitary surgery, emerging techniques in neuromodulation, and the role of guidelines in promoting surgical quality. His popular writing and expert commentary has been featured by media outlets such as The Associated Press, The Independent, Natural History, Cell, Nature Publishing Group, BBC, and various blogs. In 2015, as guest editor, he led the creation of the first issue of the AMA Journal of Ethics devoted to neurosurgical ethics.

In 2014, Dr. Amadio was one of 15 young physicians to receive the American Medical Association Foundation’s Excellence in Medicine Award. He has been named “40 under 40” by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as well as “40 under 40 Healthcare Innovators” by MedTechBoston. He has been a featured keynote speaker at Genentech, Harvard Medical School, Princeton University, Georgia Tech, Mayo Clinic, TEDx, SXSW, and Exponential Medicine. He serves on the boards of several biotechnology companies and charitable foundations.

Twitter: @AmadioMD

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jordan-amadio/12/15a/4b2

Web: http://www.NeuroLaunch.com

Jamila Garrett Bell is a member of the management team at the Emory Center for Ethics and the project manager for the Global Neuroethics Summit. At the Center, she collaborates with senior divisional leadership to manage and execute multiple projects including those related to fundraising and program development. On the GNS project, Jamila tracks action-item progress, monitors the budget, and coordinates meeting logistics.

Guo-Qiang Bi received his B.S. in Physics from Peking University (1989), M.S. in Physics from New York University (1991) and Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California at Berkeley (1996). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Diego (1996-2000). He was appointed to be Assistant Professor at the Department of Neurobiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2000, where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. In 2007, he established the Laboratory of Neurophysics at the University of Science and Technology of China, where he became a Xinchuang Professor and Changjiang Scholar. He has served as Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Biophysics at USTC, and founding co-Director of the Center for Integrative Imaging at Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale. His research focuses on understanding the structure and function of neuronal synapses and circuits. To this end, he and colleagues are also developing new microscopy tools for imaging at different scales.

Dr. Adrian Carter is an NHMRC Career Development and Senior Research Fellow and Head, Neuroethics and Public Policy Group at the School of Psychological Sciences and Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, Monash University. He is also Director, Neuroethics Program, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain Function and Chair, Australian Brain Alliance Neuroethics Subcommittee, Australian Academy of Science. His research examines the impact of neuroscience on our understanding and treatment of addiction and other compulsive behaviours, including: agency, identity, moral responsibility, the use of coercion and the capacity for voluntary control of addictive or compulsive behaviours; and the use of emerging technologies such as brain stimulation and neuroimaging, to treat addiction. He received the Australasian Professional Society of Alcohol and Other Drugs “Early Career Award for Excellence in Research and Science” (2012) and the Australian National Drug and Alcohol Award for Excellence in Research (2010). He has over 120 publications, including the book ‘Addiction Neuroethics: The Promises and Perils of Addiction Neuroscience’ (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Dr Carter has been an advisor to the World Health Organization, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the Australian Ministerial Council on Drugs Strategy and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. He is also Deputy Chair of the Australian Academy of Science Early and Mid Career Research Forum Executive.

Miyoung Chun’s career spans a wide range of experience in academia, industry, and philanthropy. She was a Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine, where she taught and performed research in the areas of cell biology and molecular medicine. As a scientist and project leader at Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. (now The Takeda Oncology Company), her research focused on functional genomics and molecular imaging in drug discovery and development, leading to over 30 U.S. and internationally issued/published patents. As the Executive Vice President of Science Programs at The Kavli Foundation, Dr. Chun has spearheaded many scientific initiatives and dynamic large-scale projects, including the development and launch of the BRAIN Initiative. Announced in 2013 by President Obama as the White House’s centerpiece Grand Challenge, BRAIN represents scientific collaboration in its truest form, marshaling private and public sectors and scientists from across disciplines to work together in order to accelerate innovative technologies that will revolutionize our understanding of the brain.

Tamami Fukushi is a visiting researcher at Division of Cerebral Integration in Department of System Neuroscience, National Institute of Physiological Sciences (NIPS). She graduated Nara Women’s University (Physical Education) and Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University (Primatology) then took Ph.D. in Behavioral Science at Department of Psychology, Hokkaido University in March 1999. Defended thesis in the field of neuroscience on an experimental investigation of neural function of non-human primate frontal cortex during visually guided isometric force production task. From 1999 to 2005, she worked for Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota as Postdoctoral/Research Associate for motor control research focusing on human and non-human primates.

She started career in Neuroethics in 2005 when she moved back to Japan at the Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) as a researcher of cohort project called “Japan Children’s Study Group”. She organized the first international symposium of neuroethics in Asian region in July 2006 in Tokyo, and contributed to a dissemination of neuroethics to Japanese and Asian stakeholders. After closing the cohort project in 2009, she experienced science policy at Center for Research and development Strategies (CRDS) in JST and regulatory science at Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA). During those years, she extended her career to science policy making and international cooperation policy in life science and medicines. In June 2017, she joined Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) as policy and information analyst and rebooted Neuroethics activity as a visiting researcher in NIPS from June 2020.

Her current interest of neuroethics is ELSI of advanced technology of neuroscience in the context of science policy and regulatory science. In 2015 She published a book chapter entitled “Social Implementation of Neurodegenerative Disease Research and Neuroethics” In: Wada, K., (ed.) Neurodegenerative Disorders as Systemic Diseases. Pp.295-304, Springer and “Neuroethics in Japan” In: Johnson, L.S.M. and Rommelfanger, K., (eds.) Handbooks in Neuroethics. Routledge Pp.442-456.

Dr. Anna Devor received her initial research training at the interface between the experimental and computational neuroscience at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her PhD thesis focused on biophysical mechanisms of the membrane potential oscillations in a network of electrically coupled neurons. After defending her PhD thesis in 2002, she went on to specialize in brain imaging technology at Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH. In 2005, she established an independent research laboratory at UC San Diego. Dr. Devor’s research program is focused on real time detection of brain activity across scales: from cellular and molecular activity of neuronal circuits in animals to noninvasive brain imaging in humans. To this end, the Devor laboratory and their collaborators assemble a suite of micro- and nanoscopic technologies that, collectively, allow precise and quantitative probing of large numbers of the relevant physiological parameters. These multimodal measurements are then combined with system-level analysis/modeling, commonly used in engineering disciplines, to understand how specific patterns of microscopic brain activity (and their pathological departures) translate into noninvasive macroscopic observables obtained with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). The overarching goal is to develop a single estimation framework for inference of neuronal network activity from multimodal human fMRI/MEG imaging data.

KENJI DOYA took BS in 1984, MS in 1986, and Ph.D. in 1991 at U. Tokyo. He became a research associate at U. Tokyo in 1986, U. C. San Diego in 1991, and Salk Institute in 1993. He joined Advanced Telecommunications Research International (ATR) in 1994 and became the head of Computational Neurobiology Department, ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in 2003. In 2004, he was appointed as the Principal Investigator of Neural Computation Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and started Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course (OCNC) as the chief organizer. As OIST established itself as a graduate university in 2011, he became a Professor and served as the Vice Provost for Research. He serves as the Co-Editor in Chief of Neural Networks since 2008 and a board member of Japanese Neural Network Society (JNNS) and Japan Neuroscience Society (JNSS). He served as the Program Co-Chair of International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP) 2007 and 2016, the Program Chair of JNSS meeting in 2010, and the General Chair of JNNS meeting in 2011. He received Tsukahara Award and JSPS Award in 2007 and MEXT Prize for Science and Technology in 2012, and joined the College of Fellows of International Neural Network Society in 2013. He lead the MEXT project on “Prediction and Decision Making” project from 2011 to 2016 and currently leads a new MEXT project “Artificial Intelligence and Brain Science”. He is interested in understanding the functions of basal ganglia and the cortical circuit based on the theory of reinforcement learning and Bayesian inference.

Contact: doya@oist.jp, Neural Computation Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, 1919-1 Tancha, Onna, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan.

Arisa Ema is the Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo and Visiting Researcher at RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project in Japan. She is a researcher in Science and Technology Studies (STS), and her primary interest is to investigate the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence by organizing an interdisciplinary research group. She is a co-founder of the Acceptable Intelligence with Responsibility Study Group (AIR), established in 2014, which seeks to address emerging issues and relationships between artificial intelligence and society. She is a member of the Ethics Committee of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI), which released the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence Society Ethical Guidelines in 2017. She is also one of the organizers of the 2017 “IEEE Ethically Aligned Design, Version 1 Workshop in Japan.” She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2012 and previously held a position as Assistant Professor at the Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University.

My research and health policy interests are the development of innovative therapies and diagnostics for unmet medical needs and cross-sectoral collaboration. I trained in Biology and Pharmacy at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany: PhD in Biology (2003); graduation in Pharmacy (2004). I worked several years as the Deputy Head of the Pharmaceutical Medicines Unit at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel. My passion for health system strengthening and product development partnerships stems from frequent work assignments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Subsequently I moved to the World Health Organization (WHO) where I coordinated the Better Medicines for Children project and the Paediatric medicines Regulators Network (PmRN). In 2011 I joined Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics (Siena, Italy) as a Senior Clinical Research Scientist where I led clinical development programmes in pandemic and paediatric vaccines. In my current position as a Health Policy Analyst at the OECD (Science and Technology Policy Division) I support the Working Party on Biotechnology, Nanotechnology and Converging Technologies (BNCT); foci of my work are: the development and use of novel technologies in biomedical research and clinical application; advancing regulatory science; and, ethical, legal and social implications of emerging technologies.

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 specifically in the areas of neuromodulation, neuropsychiatry, neurodevelopment, and neurodegeneration, and more broadly to entrepreneurship and the commercialization of health care.

In addition to her primary appointment in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC, Dr. Illes also holds associate appointments in Population and Public Health and in Journalism at UBC, and in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, USA. She is Vice Chair of the Standing Committee on Ethics of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and Vice Chair of the CIHR’s Internal Advisory Board of the Institute on Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction.  

Dr. Illes received the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian award, in December 2017. She was elected to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2011, Royal Society of Canada in 2012, and to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Division of Neuroscience) in 2013. She is immediate past President of the International Neuroethics Society, founded in 2006. She is also an elected member of the International Women’s Forum. Her latest books, a series on Developments in Neuroethics and Bioethics, feature pain, global mental health, and do-it-yourself brain devices.

Dr. Illes writes frequently for the Vancouver Sun and Canada’s The Conversation Canada, and hosts community outreach about challenging ethical problems involving biomedicine and the brain throughout BC and across the country.

Sung-Jin Jeong is a principal Researcher at the Korea Brain Research Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Seoul National University, and then worked as a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital for seven years. She then worked as a Research Fellow and Staff Scientist at Children’s Hospital Boston, before joining the Korea Brain Research Institute in 2013. Dr. Jeong recently published an article in Neuron, describing the history and goals of the Korean Brain Initiative. This initiative is centered on deciphering the brain functions and mechanisms that underlie decision-making, and the major goal is to map a functional connectome of the brain. The project also encourages the development of novel techniques and technologies, and should ultimately have socioeconomic ramifications that facilitate global collaboration across the world.

L. Syd M Johnson, PhD is a philosopher/bioethicist/neuroethicist and Associate Professor at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She’s an Associate Editor for Neuroethics, a member of the NIH BRAIN Initiative Neuroethics Working Group, and the co-founder of the American Society for Bioethics + Humanities Animal Bioethics Affinity Group. Dr. Johnson’s books include The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics (with Karen Rommelfanger), Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief, and a forthcoming edited book Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals (Springer). Her research focuses on ethical issues related to animal ethics, research ethics, and brain injuries, including sport-related neurotrauma, brain death, and disorders of consciousness. Her interest in all things with brains includes every kind of critter, zombies, and robots.

Lyric A. Jorgenson, Ph.D., is the Deputy Director for the Office of Science Policy at the National Institutes of Health. In this position, she provides senior leadership in the development and oversight of policies and programs associated with emerging, high-impact issues of importance to the biomedical research enterprise and the United States Government. Most recently, she was also the Deputy Executive Director of the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force in the Office of the Vice President in the Obama administration, where she directed and coordinated cancer-related activities across the Federal government and worked to leverage investments across sectors to dramatically accelerate progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Prior to joining the Office of Science Policy, Dr. Jorgenson was a Health Science Policy Advisor and Analyst under the Deputy Director for Science, Outreach, and Policy at the National Institutes of Health, where she served a central role in creating new signature initiatives such as the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). She was also an AAAS Science and Technology Fellow and has received numerous awards in recognition of her accomplishments and service.

Dr. Jorgenson earned a doctorate degree from the Graduate Program for Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where she conducted research in neurodevelopment with a focus on learning and memory systems. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Denison University.

Bang-Ook Jun has been a Professor of Biology at Gangneung-Wonju National University since 1986. He received his Ph.D. in Seoul National University, Department of Botany in 1986. He completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Florida, Department of Botany. He was a Visiting Professor of University of Calgary, Faculty of Communication and Culture and is now a Visiting Professor of American University of Sovereign Nations, Arizona. He was the President of Gangneung-Wonju National University in 2012-2015. He was the President of Korean Bioethics Association in 2008-2009. He has contributed to the Asian Bioethics Association as Vice-President for Korea in 2010-2014 and as President since 2016. He has written articles including “Ethical Issues on the Human Embryonic Genome Editing” and “The Ethics of Therapeutic Gene Editing Research.” His main research focus is on the ethics of emerging biotechnologies.

Kiyoto Kasai received his M.D. from The University of Tokyo (1995) and his Ph.D. in psychiatry from The University of Tokyo (2004). After a clinical residency in psychiatry at The University of Tokyo Hospital and National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, he was appointed as Instructor at the Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo in 1999. Then he did his postdoctoral research training at the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School (2000-2002). After coming back to Japan, he was appointed as Lecturer at the Department of Neuropsychiatry, The University of Tokyo in 2003, and he was promoted to Professor and Chair in 2008. His research focuses on understanding the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders using multi-modality neuroimaging techniques including MRI, EEG, MEG, and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). He has published more than 260 international peer-reviewed papers. He has served as an Editorial Board Member for Lancet Psychiatry and npj Schizophrenia. He has also served as the Clinical Research Group Leader, Brain/MINDS.

Hyunjung is the assistant manager for the Global Neuroethics Summit and works at the Brain Research Policy Center of the Korea Brain Research Institute(KBRI). She completed her master’s certificate program in political science at the Graduate School of Sogang University; International Relations is her specialty.

Prior to joining the KBRI in 2016, she has worked in the Department of Climate Change Action at the Korea Environment Corporation(Keco) and participated in 2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference COP20 as a government delegate.

Kyungjin Kim is the president of the Korea Brain Research Institute (KBRI). KBRI is a government-funded research institute that strives to enhance the welfare of citizens and national competence by centralizing research on brain-convergence technologies. Dr. Kim received his Bachelor’s and Master’s at Seoul National University, as well as a doctoral degree for neurobiology at the University of Illinois.

Having served as the head of the Brain Function Exercise and Brain Illness Treatment Research Consortium, a part of the 21st Century Frontier Research & Development Project, Dr. Kim has made large contributions to legislation to encourage neuroscientific research, which has led to the foundation of KBRI. Before his appointment, Dr. Kim was the president of the Korea Brain Society and the president of the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Science. He has published more than 200 papers in domestic and international science journals and received the National Academy of Sciences Award in 2011.

Inyoung Lee is a Professor at Hongik University, College of Law. She received B.A, M.A, and Ph.D. degrees in Criminal Law in 1983, 1986 and 1994 at Yonsei University. She was a member of the Korean National Bioethics Committee and the former president of the Korean Bioethics Society. She is a Chief of Editorial Board of Korea National Institute for Bioethics Policy. She is one of the organizers of the Korean Neuroethics Study Group established in 2017. She has broad interest in the ethical, legal and social implications of neuroscience. This includes the impact of neuroscientific research on human, neurogenetics, brain injury, adolescence brain science, and neurological evidence.

Sol Lee is the assistant manager for the Global Neuroethics Summit and works at Emory University’s Center for Ethics. He graduated from Emory University with an honors degree in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. His honors thesis, titled “Differential expression of vesicular glutamate transporter 2 in the thalamostriatal system” and research at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center focused on Parkinson’s Disease. He has also made contributions to The Neuroethics Blog, writing about neuromarketing and the neurophysiological effects of PTSD. Having past experiences in clinical settings and handling finances, his interests lie in healthcare policy.

Dr. Pat Michie is currently Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is an experimental psychologist whose research has focused on the neural basis of normal and abnormal cognition. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and is the 2016 recipient of the Australian Psychological Society’s Distinguished Contribution to Psychological Science Award. Her research has been characterised by application of theories and methodologies from basic research in cognition and cognitive neuroscience to understand the nature of cognitive deficits and their neural basis in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and those at risk. Her research spans auditory processing deficits, impaired inhibitory control and cognitive control more generally and uses both psychophysical methods to assess performance as well as functional brain imaging methods such as event-related potentials (ERPs) of the brain. She was a key member of the Australian group who were the first to demonstrate that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit impaired automatic change detection in a background of auditory regularities, an ERP-derived observation replicated many times and one of the most robust findings in the schizophrenia literature. She has published a number of seminal papers on ERP indices of attention and change detection.

Pat currently chairs the Research Committee of Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, and the National Committee of Brain and Mind (NCBM) of the Academy of Sciences of Australia. She is a joint chair of the Australian Brain Alliance, an initiative of the NCBM and the Academy. The Alliance, which is supported by the Australian Psychological Society, the Australasian Neuroscience Society and major research organisations, aims to secure investment in Australian brain research comparable to other international initiatives.

Tsuyoshi Miyakawa is a Professor and the Director of Division of Systems Medical Science at Fujita Health University. He is also the Group Leader of Genetic Engineering and Functional Genomics Unit, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine and an Adjunctive Professor and the director of Section of Rodent Behavior Analysis at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences. He received his B.A, M.A, and Ph.D. degrees in Psychology, in 1993, 1995 and 1997, respectively, at the University of Tokyo (Advisor: Hiroaki Niki). After being a Research Scientist at Niki’s lab at Riken Brain Science Institute, he moved to the US in 1998 and received postdoctoral training from Jacqueline Crawley in Section on Behavioral Neuropharmacology at National Institute of Mental Health. In 1999, he became a Research Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. He then moved to Picower Center for Learning and Memory, directed by Susumu Tonegawa, at MIT in 2001 and was a Research Scientist and the supervisor of behavior core facility there.

He has been investigating the relationships between genes, brain and behavior by utilizing a “comprehensive behavioral test battery” on genetically engineered mice since 1993. At MIT, he found that forebrain specific calcineurin knockout mice show multiple abnormal behaviors related to schizophrenia with the strategy and that a calcineurin gene, PPP3CC, is associated with schizophrenia susceptibility in human. This made him believe that a systematic investigation of the behaviors of mutant mice is useful in understanding the pathophysiology and pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric disorders. Since coming back to Japan in 2003, Miyakawa and his colleagues have assessed more than 70 different strains of mutant mice and they are trying to find what is happening in the brains of the mice models of psychiatric disorders. He is directing a bioinformatics project, involving more than 15 institutions in Japan, of Japan Science and Technology Agency for developing a “Mouse Behavioral Phenotype Database.”

Eisuke Nakazawa, PhD, is a lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Medicine (Japan). He received his doctorate in in Philosophy of Science from the University of Tokyo. His current research area is Biomedical Ethics, Neuroethics and Philosophy of Science. His recent publications include Sadato N, Morita K, Kasai K, Fukushi T, Nakamura K, Nakazawa E, Okano H, Okabe S. 2019. Neuroethical issues of the Brain/MINDS project of Japan. Neuron 101 (February 6, 2019):385–389. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.01.006. 32. And Ino Y, Nakazawa E, Akabayashi A. 2019. Pro-immigration policies should be promoted conditionally to ensure that immigrant health is ensured. The Lancet. In print.

Dr. Khara Ramos serves as Director, Neuroethics Program, and Health Scientist Administrator in the Office of Scientific Liaison (OSL), at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at NIH. She leads efforts to integrate neuroethics into the NIH BRAIN Initiative, and serves as Executive Secretary of the Neuroethics Working Group of the NIH BRAIN Multi-Council Working Group and co-lead of the trans-NIH BRAIN neuroethics project team. In her role within OSL she works to support a seamless flow of information on NINDS-supported research advances and initiatives to various stakeholders including scientific and academic communities, as well as policy-makers, patients, and the public

Previously, Dr. Ramos worked as Special Assistant to the Deputy Director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), where she served as point person on high profile projects for NIDCR and provided support to the NIDCR Office of the Director regarding policy analysis, communications, program oversight, evaluation activities, strategic planning, and project coordination. She originally moved from academia to federal service via the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship Program, following a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she studied the role of non-neuronal cells of the central nervous system in chronic pain states and in opioid-induced central sensitization. Dr. Ramos holds a Ph.D. in neurosciences from the University of California, San Diego, and a bachelor’s degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.

Dr. Karen S. Rommelfanger is a neurotech ethicist and strategist. She received her PhD in neuroscience and received postdoctoral training in neuroscience and neuroethics. Her lab, the Neuroethics and Neurotech Innovation Collaboratory explores how evolving neuroscience and neurotechnologies challenge societal definitions of disease and medicine, cross-cultural neuroethics, and cross-sectoral neuroethics implementation. Dr. Rommelfanger is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, the Neuroethics Program Director at Emory University’s Center for Ethics, and Senior Associate Editor at the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience and on the first neuroethicist to be called to the editorial advisory board of Neuron. She is dedicated to cross-cultural work in neuroethics serving as ethicist to the China-India Mental Health Alliance and is co-chair of the Global Neuroethics Workgroup of the International Brain Initiative. She is an appointed member to the NIH BRAIN Initiative Neuroethics Working Group and served as ambassador to the EU Human Brain Project’s Ethics Advisory Board. As a Neuroethics Subgroup member of the Advisory Committee to the Director at NIH, she helped design a neuroethics roadmap for BRAIN 2025. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Disruptive Technology for Mental Health. A key part of her work is fostering communication and engagement across multiple stakeholders in neuroscience. Facilitating community conversations, she edits the largest international online neuroethics discussion forum The Neuroethics Blog and she is a frequent contributor and commentator in popular media such as The New York Times, NPR, and The Huffington Post.

Lab URL: https://neuroethicslab.com

University URL: https://ethics.emory.edu/who-we-are/our-people/faculty/core/rommelfanger-karen.html

Dr. Osamu Sakura is the Professor and Dean of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo in Japan. His research centers on the general and theoretical aspects of science communication. His main interests are neuroethics and social aspects of AI and robotics. He has also been engaged in the relation between experts and local people in the Fukushima disaster area. After attaining a PhD in primatology, focusing on behavioral ecological research of wild chimpanzees, he has moved into the field of science studies, including the history of the theory of evolution in Japan. He still maintains an interest in evolutionary biology, which informs his evolutionary psychological approach to understanding human attitudes to robots and AI. He taught in Yokohama National University (1993-2000) and worked as visiting scholar on the University of Freiburg (1995-96) before moving to current position. He published over a hundred journal papers and several books, including: How “Convenience” Makes People Unhappy: Modern Technology and Its Social Value (2013, in Japanese), “A view from the Far East: neuroethics in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea” (East Asian Science, Technology and Society, vol. 6, 2012), “Launching a Two-front war against anti-intellectualism and expert paternalism: lessons from the Fukushima nuclear disaster” (5: Designing Media Ecology, vol. 3, 2015).

Dr. Arleen Salles  is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Research Ethics and Bioethics, Uppsala University, Sweden, and task leader and research collaborator in the Ethics and Society subproject (SP12) of the EU-flagship Human Brain Project. She is the Director of the Neuroethics Program at Centro de Investigaciones Filosoficas in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and member of the organizing committee of the Global Neuroethics Summit series.  She works on a wide range of neuroethical topics, from the nature of the field and the development of a culturally aware neuroethics, to conceptual issues in neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders, neuroimaging and privacy concerns, and ethical and conceptual issues in artificial intelligence. She is currently working on a conceptual analysis of human identity and the self, and the debate over the potential impact of neurotechnologies on human nature.

For more information: http://www.crb.uu.se/staff/arleen-salles/

Hagop Sarkissian is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, Baruch College, and CUNY Graduate Center. His research is located at the intersection of cognitive science, ethics, and classical Chinese philosophy: he draws insights from the cognitive and behavioral sciences to explore topics in moral psychology, agency, and the status of morality, with an eye toward seeing how culture shapes cognition in these domains. In addition to drawing from the empirical sciences, he also uses the tools of experimental psychology in some of his research. He has authored or co-authored papers in these areas for journals such as The Annual Review of Psychology, Philosophical Studies, Philosopher’s Imprint, Mind & Language, Cognitive Science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Religion, Brain, and Behavior, Philosophy Compass, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, History of Philosophy Quarterly, and The Journal of Chinese Philosophy, as well as numerous anthologies. He is also the co-editor for Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology (Bloomsbury 2014) and The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self (Columbia, forthcoming). Sarkissian holds a B.A. (Philosophy and East Asian Studies) and M.A. (East Asian Studies) from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. (Philosophy) from Duke University. His work has been translated into Chinese and Korean.

Ilina Singh is Professor of Neuroscience & Society at the University of Oxford, where she holds a joint appointment between the Department of Psychiatry and the Faculty of Philosophy (Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics). Her work examines the psychosocial and ethical implications of advances in biomedicine and neuroscience for young people and families. Recent projects include the ADHD VOICES project (www.adhdvoices.com); Neuroenhancement Responsible Research and Innovation (www.nerri.eu); and the Urban Brain Project (www.urbanbrainlab.com). In 2014, Professor Singh received a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award for a study entitled: Becoming Good: Early Intervention and Moral Development in Child Psychiatry.

Professor Singh has published widely in eminent journals, including Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Social Science and Medicine, and the American Journal of Bioethics. She is the lead editor of a new volume: BioPrediction, Biomarkers and Bad Behavior: Scientific, Ethical and Legal Challenges (co-edited with Walter-Sinnott Armstrong and Julian Savulescu), published by Oxford University Press. She has acted as an advisor to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, NICE, NIMH and other organisations. She is co-editor of the journal BioSocieties and on the editorial board of the American Journal of Bioethics-Neuroscience and Qualitative Psychology.

Laura Specker Sullivan, a specialist in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural ethics, is a research fellow at the Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School. From 2015-2017 she was a postdoctoral neuroethics fellow at the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, University of Washington and the National Core for Neuroethics, University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2015, after spending two years conducting research on the theory and practice of informed consent in Japan and the U.S. at the Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University (with support from the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship Foundation). She is currently the chair of the Neuroethics Affinity Group for the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, a member of the Philosophy and Medicine committee of the American Philosophical Association, and a visiting scholar with the Science for Monks program in India. She has published articles on medical ethics and neuroethics in the American Journal of Bioethics – Neuroscience, Science and Engineering Ethics, Brain-Computer Interfaces, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Social Science and Medicine, and the Journal of Japanese of Philosophy.

Stepheni Uh is a Clinical Research Assistant at the Center for Autism Research (CAR) within the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She graduated from Emory University with degrees in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and Ethics. As the 2014-15 recipient of the Bobby Jones Fellowship, she completed her MPhil in Behavioural and Neural Sciences at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Her research experiences have spanned across the domains of social and cognitive neuroscience, the focus of both her honors and master’s theses being the neuroscientific basis and role(s) of moral disgust. Since completing her studies, she has engaged in various human translational neuroscience work in both exploratory scientific and clinical settings at University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Neuroscience & Society and currently at CAR. Her primary interests lie in the ethical, social, and legal implications of human neuroscience research and the intersection of science with policy across diverse populations.

David E. Winickoff, JD, MA, is Senior Policy Analyst and Secretary of the Working Party on Bio-, Nano- and Converging Technology at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. He came to the OECD from a tenured professorship in bioethics and biotechnology policy at University of California, Berkeley. The work he leads at the OECD addresses policies for the responsible development of emerging technologies in areas such as synthetic biology, neurotechnology, gene editing, the bioeconomy, and convergent production technologies such as robotics and cyber-physical systems. He has over fifty publications in academic journals and other outlets. His articles have appeared in Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Climate Change and the Yale Journal of International Law, among others. Winickoff served as a working group member on a U.K. Royal Academy panel on geoengineering and a National Academies of Science expert study on Gene Drives. He holds degrees from Yale University, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School and was a fellow for two years at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Bioethics, the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair in Jewish Bioethics, a Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Sociology, and the Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University.  Dr. Wolpe also serves as the first Senior Bioethicist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), where he is responsible for formulating policy on bioethical issues and safeguarding research subjects. He is Co-Editor of the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB), the premier scholarly journal in bioethics, and Editor of AJOB Neuroscience, and sits on the editorial boards of over a dozen professional journals in medicine and ethics. Dr Wolpe is a past President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities; a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the country’s oldest medical society; a Fellow of the Hastings Center, the oldest bioethics institute in America; and was the first National Bioethics Advisor to Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Dr. Wolpe moved to Emory University in the summer of 2008 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was on the faculty for over 20 years in the Departments of Psychiatry, Sociology, and Medical Ethics.  He was a Senior Fellow of Penn’s Center for Bioethics, and directed the Scattergood Program for the Applied Ethics of Behavioral Health and the Program in Psychiatry and Ethics at the School of Medicine.
Dr. Wolpe is the author of over 125 articles, editorials, and book chapters in sociology, medicine, and bioethics, and has contributed to a variety of encyclopedias on bioethical issues.  A futurist interested in social dynamics, Dr. Wolpe’s work focuses on the social, religious, ethical, and ideological impact of technology on the human condition.  Considered one of the founders of the field of neuroethics, which examines the ethical implications of neuroscience, he also writes about other emerging technologies, such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, prosthetics, and new reproductive technologies. 

Kevin Chien-Chang Wu, M.D, LL.M., Ph.D., a forensic psychiatrist, neuroethicist and mental health policy scholar from Taiwan, is an associate professor at National Taiwan University College of Medicine with joint appointments at College of Law and College of Public Health. He was awarded excellent tutorship four times at the university. Since 2015, he has been the director of Department of Psychiatry at National Taiwan University and the chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the National Taiwan University Hospital. He also serves as the deputy director of the Biomedical Ethics at the university. For six years (2007-2013) he was the chair of the Forensic Psychiatric Committee at the Taiwanese Society of Psychiatry and has conducted more than 400 forensic examinations including those of more than 10 high-profile criminal cases in Taiwan. In the past 12 years, he has been the expert involved with drafting revised statutes of the Taiwan Mental Health Act.

His research interests are bioethics (including medical ethics and public health ethics), mental health law and policy (including human rights and compulsory measures, competency, criminal responsibility, dementia, and suicide prevention), neuroethics (including enhancement, free will and moral responsibility), and pharmaceutical policy (including addicted drugs and vaccines). He authored more than 70 publications in English and Mandarin, including original papers, book chapters, and one book in Forensic Psychiatry (in Chinese). Using philosophical anthropology as the core theme, he hopes to explore how different disciplines could contribute at multiple levels to the governance of human affairs with various ways of understanding and seeing human conditions. He is now the PI of several national research grants from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology, topics of which comprise mental health law and policy regarding the governance suicide, addiction and psychopath; the ELSI and policy of dementia diagnosis and management; and international comparisons of mental health law.

Akira Yasumura, PhD, is a research fellow in the Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo (Japan). He is in charge of Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) for the Clinical Research Group of Brain/ MINDS. His primary area of work is solving ethical problems in multicenter collaborative research. His current interests include neuroethics and research ethics. His research experience includes a period at the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry in Japan, where he researched the fields of cognitive neuroscience which target developmental disorders in children. His publication includes over 20 papers and books. In addition, he has received seven research awards.

Jialin Zheng is Dean of the Tongji University School of Medicine, where he is a Professor of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine. He is simultaneously a Professor of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). Dr. Zheng’s research focuses on the understanding and treatment of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease. Ultimately it is the mission of his lab to develop drugs that will inhibit neurotoxin production and enhance neuronal repair in the brain. Dr. Zheng has been at the fore of UNMC’s collaborative efforts in China. He is the Director of UNMC’s Asia Pacific Rim Development Program and has worked to create more than 10 partnerships in China, including the formation of the first joint U.S./Chinese M.D./Ph.D. program. Dr. Zheng received his M.D. from Xuzhou Medical College in China and served as a visiting scholar at the State University of New York at Buffalo prior to joining UNMC.