Dr. Mykhailo Arych is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Finance, Institute of Economics and Management, National University of Food Technologies (Ukraine). In 2012, he graduated from the Bucovina State Finance and Economic University (since 2016 included in the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University) with a master's degree in Finance and Credit (Economics). In 2015, he obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from the National University of Food Technologies (2015).  For more than eight years, Dr. Arych has been teaching Finance, Insurance and Insurance services. His primary research interests include insurance markets, genetic testing and discrimination in insurance, and agricultural insurance. He was also a co-investigator of the research grant funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine for the research entitled 'Comprehensive assessment of the insurance market and development of recommendations for improvements of competitiveness of Ukraine's insurance in the context of European integration' (2017 - 2019). Dr. Arych is a co-author of a book entitled 'Competitiveness of the insurance market of Ukraine in the conditions of intensification of globalization processes: a collective monograph' (2020). Since 2013, he is a member of the organizing committee of the annual international scientific conferences at the National University of Food Technologies. Since September 2019, he is also a member of the Academic Council of the Institute of Economics and Management. In June 2020, Dr. Arych received the Fellowship of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine for young scientists.

Bénédicte BEVIERE-BOYER is a lecturer in private law at the University of Paris 8 Law Faculty and Deputy Director of the Centre de recherches juridique de droit privé et droit de la santé (EA1581). Her research work focuses mainly on bioethics law, ethics and digital technology. She has written various articles on research, innovation, digital technology, health data, the care relationship, fundamental principles of personal protection, assisted reproduction, pre-implantation diagnosis, organ donation, etc. She has organized several conferences on Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Sovereignty, Digital Responsibility, Aging, etc., as well as a two-year cycle of conferences on bioethics at the Court of Cassation, which will continue with another cycle of conferences on digital issues. For several years now, she has also been organizing academic exchanges with Chinese universities (conferences, collective works).

B.C.L., LL.M., Ph.D., Solicitor

Aisling is Associate Professor of Law at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, where she lectures modules including ‘Genetics Law and Society’ and ‘Medical Law and Bioethics.’

Aisling graduated from National University of Ireland, Galway with a law degree (B.C.L.) in 2005 and graduated from University College Cork with a masters in law (LL.M.) in 2006. She is a qualified Solicitor (Law Society of Ireland) and trained in a large commercial law firm in Dublin (2006 – 2009). In 2013 Aisling defended her PhD (funded by the Irish Research Council), entitled ‘Advancing Science and Controlling the Misuse of Genetic Information in Employment and Insurance – Towards an Effective European Union Regulatory Framework.’

From 2009 to 2014 Aisling was a part-time Lecturer in Law at the School of Law, NUI Galway, and also worked as a Research Assistant at the Centre for Disability Law and Policy, NUI Galway (2009 – 2010). She is an honorary fellow and an affiliated researcher of the Burton Blatt Institute, Syracuse University, New York and was a visiting scholar at this Institute in October 2012, May 2014 and June 2018.

Aisling’s research interests lie in the fields of genetics law and policy and medical law. She has published widely in these fields in journals including the European Journal of Health Law, the Journal of Community Genetics and the Irish Journal of Medical Science. Aisling is author of a book entitled ‘Genetics, Disability and the Law – Towards an EU Legal Framework’ (Cambridge University Press 2017) and co- editor of a book entitled ‘Genetic Discrimination – Transatlantic Perspectives on the Case for a European Level Legal Response’ (Routledge 2014). She speaks regularly at conferences and other events in Ireland, Europe and internationally.

Edward (Ted) Dove is Lecturer in Health Law and Regulation at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh, and Deputy Director of the J Kenyon Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and Law. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree (BA) in Political Science and Civil Law and Common Law degrees (BCL, LLB) from McGill University, a Master of Laws degree (LLM) from Columbia University, and a PhD in Law from the University of Edinburgh. Ted’s primary research interests are in the areas of biomedical research governance, research ethics oversight, health-related data access and sharing, and health data protection. Currently, Ted is Chair of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and International Health Data Sharing Forum, which is part of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH). Ted is also a member of the Scientific Programme Committee for the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG), and is a member of the Data Access Committee of METADAC (Managing Ethico-social, Technical and Administrative issues in Data ACcess), which is a multi-agency, multi-study data access structure that services several of the UK’s major cohort studies. From 2013-2015, he served as Coordinator for the Regulatory and Ethics Working Group of the GA4GH, wherein he was the lead drafter of the “Framework for Responsible Sharing of Genomic and Health-Related Data”, and from 2014-2017, as Coordinator of the GA4GH’s Ethics Review Equivalency Task Team. From 2011-2015, Ted was a member of the International Cancer Genome Consortium’s (ICGC) Identifiability and Privacy Subgroup. Among other works, he is the co-author of the 11th edition of the leading medical law textbook in the UK, Mason and McCall Smith’s Law and Medical Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2019) and author of the forthcoming open access monograph, Regulatory Stewardship of Health Research: Navigating Participant Protection and Research Promotion (Edward Elgar, 2020).

Dr Calvin Ho is Associate Professor with the Faculty of Law of The University of Hong Kong, Co-Head of the Accountability Policy Task Team of the Global Alliance for Genomics & Health, and a member of the Ethics Review Board of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). He was the co-Head (from 2014-2019) of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Bioethics in Singapore and have also served on national advisory committees on medical ethics, transplantation and genetic testing of the Ministry of Health of Singapore. Calvin’s research interests are in regulatory governance and biomedical law and ethics, with focus on emergent technologies (particularly data analytics and AI). He is a co-editor of Bioethics in Singapore (World Scientific, 2010) and Genetic Privacy (Imperial, 2013), the author of Juridification in Bioethics (Imperial, 2016) and an author of WHO Guidelines on Ethical Issues in Public Health Surveillance (World Health Organization 2017). 

Dr. Chih-hsing Ho is Assistant Research Fellow at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Her research focuses on the nexus of law and medicine in general, with particular attention to the governance of genomics and newly emerging technologies, such as biobanks, big data and artificial intelligence (AI). She is currently a member of the Biobank Ethics Review Board at the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) in Taiwan and a member of the Ethics and Governance Council (EGC) of Taiwan Biobank. Since 2015, she has been a PI in law for a health cloud project in Taiwan and is responsible for designing an adequate regulatory framework for the secondary use of health data and data linkage. She holds a Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE) where she was an Olive Stone Scholar and an awardee of Morris Finer Memorial Fellowship. She obtained her first law degree from Taiwan, and later received her LLM from Columbia Law School and a JSM from Stanford University. Since 2016, she has served as Associate Editor at the Editorial Board of ELSI in Science and Genetics- Frontiers. Before moving back to Taipei in 2014, she had been working at the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law (CMEL) at the University of Hong Kong. Her works appear in many renowned international journals, such as BMC Medical Ethics, Medical Law International, Frontiers in Genetics, Asian Bioethics Review, and the Journal of Law, Information and Science.

Academic background:

Degree in Law (University Complutense of Madrid), PhD in Law (University of Deusto, Bilbao).

Current position: 

Permanent Senior research fellow. Public Law Department. Faculty of Law. University of the Basque Country. Spain. Member of the Chair in Law and the Human Genome, University of the Basque Country.

Current teaching: 

Graduate level: Criminal Law in the Faculty of Law of the University of the Basque Country. 
Postgraduate level: Biolaw in Master Programs (several Spanish and Latinoamerican universities).

Research:

Participation in several research projects supported by public institutions at national and international levels related to health and genetic data protection, patient’s rights, biobanks, personalized medicine or cross border health care. 

Publications:

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4166-5941

Other activities:

Member of the Ethics Committee of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Ministry of Science and Innovation. Spain) and of the Ethics Committee of the University of the Basque Country. Member of the Scientific External Committee of the National Platform of Biobanks (Instituto de Salud Carlos III). Member of the Ethics and Governance Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium. Chair of the Legal and Ethical Advisory Board of the Rare Anaemias Disorders European Epidemiological Platform. Member of the ELSI WP of the European 1 Million Genomes Initiative.

She has collaborated with the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation in the preparation of the Spanish Law 14/2007 on Biomedical Research and of the Royal Decree approved on 18 November 2011 on biobanks.

Kazuto Kato, Ph.D., is Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Public Policy at the Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University. He is also a Project Professor of the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) at Kyoto University. He has a PhD degree in developmental biology from Kyoto University. After finishing postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge with Professor John Gurdon, he started to work in the interface between bioscience and society, focusing on ethical and social issues of genomics and stem cell research. Prof. Kato is a member of various international projects/academic societies such as Research Ethics Committee, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) and Ethics and Policy Committee, ICGC (International Cancer Genome Consortium). In 2010, he was appointed as a member of the Expert Panel on Bioethics of the Council for Science and Technology Policy (CSTP) of the Cabinet Office, Japan. Currently, he leads a research group, the Research Unit of the ELSI (ethical, legal and social implications) of genomics, with the funding from the MEXT.

Hannah Kim is a research assistant professor at the Department of Medical Law and Ethics, Division of Medical Humanities and Society, College of Medicine, at Yonsei University, South Korea. She studied medicine and holds a PhD in healthcare law from Yonsei University. She worked as a Fellow at Department of Medical Law and Ethics at Yonsei University in 2016 –2017. She was a member of Advisory Committee for DTC-GT under the Ministry of Health and Welfare in South Korea. She worked as a visiting scholar at the Centre of Genomics and Policy in 2018. 6. – 2019. 5.

Since 2011, she has focused on ethical, legal and social issues surrounding gene editing, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, 3D bioprinting technology, precision medicine, intellectual property rights, universal health coverage, genetic discrimination, data sharing and privacy, from several ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) projects.

Timo Minssen is Professor of Law at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) and the Founder and Managing Director of UCPH's Center for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law (CeBIL). His research concentrates on Intellectual Property-, Competition & Regulatory Law with a special focus on new technologies in the pharma, life science & biotech sectors. His studies comprise a plethora of legal issues emerging in the lifecycle of biotechnological and medical products and processes -  from the regulation of research and incentives for innovation to technology transfer and commercialization.

At UCPH he leads large interdisciplinary research projects examining legal issues in synthetic biology, precision medicine, biologics/biosimilars & large research infrastructures, as well as a large collaborative research program that is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. He is scientific advisory board member of the Copenhagen Centre for Regulatory Sciences and steering committee member of the Danish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. At CeBIL, Timo collaborates with an international network of renowned core-partners including inter alia the University of Cambridge, Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School.  Timo has also been the legal expert advisory board member of EU Commission studies of the pharmaceutical sector.

Palmira Granados Moreno is an academic associate at the Centre of Genomics and Policy of McGill University, where she has worked for the past 7 years. She is a Mexican lawyer specialised in intellectual property and new technologies and a Doctor of Civil Law candidate at the Faculty of Law at McGill University under the supervision of Professor Richard Gold. Her research focuses on the interface of intellectual property and medicine and access to healthcare; commercialisation, valorisation, and open science; genetic discrimination; ethics and genetics; public-private partnerships; and medical devices regulation. Prior to working at the Centre of Genomics and Policy, she was a member of the International Expert Group of the Innovation Partnership, the New Researchers Group of VALGEN, Creative Commons Mexico, and the Free Software Foundation. She also worked at a Mexican law firm in the area of intellectual property and information technology and was a lecturer at renowned university in Mexico.

Katharina Ó Cathaoir, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Health Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, where she researches in Danish and global health law, with a focus on the implications of Big Data for the human rights of patients. Katharina contributes to several interdisciplinary projects spanning obesity provision, genomic medicine, data sharing and use of algorithms in treatment and research. Her research analyses to what extent legal norms, like informed consent and the right to data protection, are implicated and in need of renegotiation in light of emerging health technologies.

https://jura.ku.dk/english/staff/research/?pure=en/persons/472315

Margaret is Professor of Law at the University of Tasmania (formerly Law Dean), Deputy Director, Centre for Law and Genetics and Pro Vice Chancellor, Culture and Wellbeing. She has longstanding experience in health law and ethics, publishing extensively in the field. She led an empirical interdisplinary research project funded by the Australian Research Council exploring the occurrence of  genetic discrimination in Australia (2002-2004). She has been engaged by Commonwealth and State governments and agencies as consultant and member for various national committees including the National Health and Medical Research Councils Human Genetic Advisory Committee (2009-2015). She has held quasi-judicial roles including as member of the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal and is the Chair of the Australian Genetic Non-Discrimination Working Group. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.

She was awarded PhD in Law from the Department of Law, University of Kerala, for her doctoral thesis on "Stem Cell Research: Legal Dimensions". She completed her LL.M. in Constitutional and Administrative Law on merit scholarship, securing First Rank with Distinction from the Department of Law, University of Kerala and her LL.B with Second Rank from the University of Kerala. She was awarded the Sachivothama Shashtiabdapurthi Memorial Prize Gold Medal, Justice Muthunayagom Memorial Prize, Justice T Krishnan Nair Memorial Gold Medal Endowment, Justice M. Fathima Beevi Endowment and Malloor K. Govinda Pillai Gold Medal for Law from the University of Kerala.

She has been an invited speaker and delegate in many international forums such as the International Research Conference held under the aegis of the National University of Singapore and the 49th Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health Conference (APACPH) 2017, held in Yonsei University International Campus, Korea. She has to her credit many publications in reputed International and National Law Journals. She has participated as resource person in training programmes as well as international and national seminars conducted by organizers such as the Institute for Shipboard Education and University of Virginia, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology School of Law, Department of Law, University of Kerala, School of Legal Studies, CUSAT among others. She has also presented peer-reviewed papers in international and national seminars and has attended UGC refresher courses and several faculty development programmes.

She had participated in moot courts during her graduation and won prizes for presentation as well as memorials in international and national Moot court competitions.

During her tenure in NUALS, she has organized many academic programmes including international and national seminars, workshops, essay competitions, IP-specific talk shows etc, as the Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Rights. Even prior to that she had organized the first of its kind national seminar in Kerala, on the legal status and rights of sexual minorities.

She is a member of the NUALS Research Committee and is a Research Guide in the University. She is a member of the UG Board of Studies, and also been in the organizing committees of many institutional programmes such as Annual Convocations and Moot Court Competitions.

As the Faculty-in-charge of Alumni NUALS, she had organized the First Alumni Meet of the University in November, 2017.

Her areas of interest include Intellectual Property Law, Health and Bioethics, and Equality of Rights.

Michael Pepper is Director of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Director of the SAMRC Extramural Unit for Stem Cell Research and Therapy and a research professor in the Department of Immunology in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Pretoria. He is also professeur associé in the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He obtained his MBChB in 1982 from the University of Cape Town, and moved to Geneva in 1986, where he obtained his PhD in 1990, MD in 1992 and Privat Docent in 1997. He returned to South Africa in July 2004.

Michael has worked extensively in the field of clinically-oriented (translational) molecular cell biology, and his interests include stem cells and the human genome as well as their ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI). He assists the National Department of Health with legislation concerning human tissues and in particular cell-based therapies, and is President and Chairman of the Board of the South African Tissue Bank Association. Michael is chairperson of a consensus study on the ELSI of human genome editing which is being conducted for the Academy of Science of South Africa.

Professor Prince’s teaching and research interests explore the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomic testing, with particular focus on genetic discrimination and privacy rights, the intersection of clinical and research ethics, and insurance coverage of genetic technologies and interventions.  Professor Prince is a former Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law, where she taught New Genetics: Ethical, Legal and Policy Issues and Employment Law.  She has published a variety of articles in legal, bioethics, and medical journals, including the American Journal of Bioethics, Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, and Genetics in Medicine, and she has presented and been an invited speaker at conferences across the country.  She was recently awarded a Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) from the National Human Genome Research Institute to examine the use of genetic information by life, long-term care, and disability insurers.

Before joining the legal academy, Professor Prince served as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the UNC Center for Genomics and Society (CGS) in the Department of Social Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine as well as an intern on the UNC Hospital Ethics Committee.  In 2015, she received the UNC’s Postdoctoral Award for Research Excellence and received additional funding from the Skadden Foundation for her work on the hospital ethics committee.  In addition to her research role, Professor Prince has also worked as a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney at the Cancer Legal Resource Center in Los Angeles, California.

Professor Prince is a graduate of University of California, Los Angeles (cum laude, B.A.) and Georgetown University (M.P.P. and J.D.)

Dr. Yernar Shalkharov obtained a Ph.D. in Law at the International Kazakh-Turkish University. During his doctorate, Dr. Shalkharov investigated some aspects of the rights and obligations of medical workers involved in genomics. He previously obtained a master's in law and molecular biology at the Kazakh National Pedagogical University, for which his thesis focused on extremophiles as elements of shadow biospheres. Currently, Dr. Shalkharov is the Director of the Genomic Research Department at Kainar Consulting, a member of the World Association of Medical Law, and a Senior Lecturer teaching “International Genomics” at the South-Kazakhstan University. His research interests focus on the field of genomic law, medical law and bioterrorism.

Ms. Lingqiao Song, B.Sc, LL.M., Ph.D. student, Chinese Lawyer, is an Academic Associate at the Center of Genomics and Policy, McGill University. She serves as a member of Institutional Review Board of Faculty of Medicine, McGill University. She has a variety of research topics ranging from on Ethical, Legal, Social Implications (ELSI) of gene technology, genetic discrimination, genomic data sharing, to the Chinese regulatory framework of genetic privacy.

Dr. Augusto Valderrama is a Professor and the Scientific Research Director in the Faculty of Health at the University of Santiago de Cali (Colombia). Dr. Valderrama holds an M.Sc. in basic medical sciences (Immunology and Molecular Biology), a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences (Human Genomics and Public Health), and was a Postdoc, Fulbright visiting scholar, at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA). 

Most of his 20-year experience as a biomedical researcher focuses on translational research for neglected infectious and noninfectious diseases in underserved populations, with a particular interest in the implementation of cutting-edge technologies to foster quality of life and industrial development. His expertise also focuses on the convergence of biomedical sciences with the community and public health sciences, in areas like molecular epidemiology or community precision medicine. He has been a member of multiple national (Colciencias) and international (USA, Peru, Brazil, Mexico) evaluation panels, and an invited editor and reviewer of well-renowned international scientific publications (e.g., PLOSone, BMC Genomics). Dr. Valderrama has also been a longtime collaborator on Chocogen, a research project that aims to facilitate genetic studies on a predominantly Afro-Colombian population (https://www.chocogen.com/ ). Dr. Valderrama has a long-standing interest in legal and ethical questions regarding the use of genetic information in medicine and research, and is interested in promoting the development of a legal framework to prevent genetic discrimination in Colombia.

Ine Van Hoyweghen is Research Professor at the Centre for Sociological Research (University of Leuven) where she directs the Life Sciences & Society Lab. She is a leading and internationally-renowned researcher in sociology of biomedicine, science and technology studies (STS), and sociology of health care innovation. Her main research activities concentrate on the social implications of biomedicine (genomics, digital health, personalised medicine). She published among other issues on topics such as genetic discrimination, behaviour-based personalisation, solidarity in Personalised Medicine, EU digital health innovation policies, health care delivery of genetic testing, epigenetics, citizen science, and global health. She is the PI of the project “Postgenomic Solidarity. European Life Insurance in the Era of Personalised Medicine”, for which she received a prestigious Odysseus grant by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). Van Hoyweghen is the author of many books, including Risks in the Making. Travels in Life Insurance and Genetics (Amsterdam University Press, 2007), Making Global Health Care Innovation Work. Standardization and Localization (2014, Palgrave, with Engel, N. & Krumeich, A.), Citizen Science (2019, with Gijsel, L. & Huyse, T.) and Shifting Solidarities. Trends and Developments in European Societies (2019, Palgrave, with Pulignano, V.). Her research has been supported by the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the European Commission (FP7, Horizon 2020, COST), and other bodies. Many of these research projects did include collaborations across disciplinary boundaries. Van Hoyweghen is (founding) Board Member of the Leuven Institute for Genomics and Society (LIGAS) and Chair of the Leuven Interdisciplinary Platform for the Study of the Sciences (LIPSS). She is Alumnus Member of the Young Academy of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB), Member of the Belgian Consultative Committee on Bioethics (2019-2023), and (founding) President of the Belgian Science, Technology & Society Network (www.bsts.be).

Torsten H. Voigt is a university professor of sociology and the chair of technology and diversity at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. His research interests lie at the interface of science and technology studies, medical sociology, and social theory. He is particularly interested in biotechnological innovations---specifically medical and forensic genetics as well as neuroscience---and how they relate to and are influenced by societal norms and values. He has published extensively on the societal and ethical implications of DNA testing.

Chisato is a research associate in Prof. Kazuto Kato's lab in the Department of Biomedical Ethics and Public Policy at the Graduate School of Medicine at Osaka University. She has former experience as wet molecular biologist and dry database curator, and is now involved in bioethics issues related to human genome research.  Her research focuses on the following topics;

• laws and regulations related to human genome research;
• database policies for data-sharing (data access and uses) of human gene/variation/phenotype databases;
• Ethical, Legal, Social Implications (ELSI) issues related to human genomes and genetics in general.

Dr. Bombard is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto in the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation and a Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital.

Dr. Bombard is an international authority on genetic discrimination. She pioneered research on genetic discrimination when she conducted the first empirical study on genetic discrimination in Canada. Dr. Bombard’s landmark research on genetic discrimination provided crucial evidence for international clinical practice guidelines and provincial and federal legislation on genetic discrimination in Canada. Her work and testimonies to the Parliament of Canada’s Senate helped pass the historic Genetic Non-Discrimination Act of 2017. For these contributions, Dr. Bombard was awarded the inaugural recipient of the Maurice McGregor Award for Demonstrated Excellence and Leadership Potential from the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) and also received a ‘Rising Star’ award from CIHR’s Institute of Health Services and Policy Research in 2011.

Dr. Bombard’s current research focuses on evaluating the adoption of new genomic technologies in clinical practice. She also conducts public and patient engagement research to advance health technology assessment and health service delivery. Dr. Bombard is active in numerous international policy advisory committees; her research informs policy development in this area. This program of research is supported by a CIHR Foundation grant; she also holds a CIHR New Investigator Award.

Dr. Bombard holds a Fellowship from Yale University (Health Policy), a Fellowship from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (Cancer Genomics) and a Fellowship from the University of Toronto (Health Services Research).

Charles Dupras, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center of Genomics and Policy (CGP) at McGill University. He completed a master's degree in molecular biology at INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier, then completed a doctoral degree in bioethics at the University of Montreal. He was recently awarded a three-year fellowship (2017-2020) by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), for pursuing his research on the translation of emerging knowledge in epigenetics.

Epigenetics is an emerging field of study focusing on the biological mechanisms responsible for regulating gene expression. Epigenetic modifications have been associated with physico-chemical (e.g., pollutants) and psychosocial (e.g., family context, social adversity) environments to which people are exposed during their development, and with the development of many diseases later in life. Charles is interested by the ethical, legal and social implications of epigenetics. He examines, among other things, the impact of epigenetics on nature vs nurture representations, and questions of environmental and social justice.

As part of his work at the CGP, Charles is exploring Canadian laws and public policies potentially applicable to – or to be amended to accommodate – recent findings about epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation. The main objective is to ensure that Canadian regulations, such as the recent Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (2017), or existing guidelines for the ethical conduct of genetic research (e.g., data sharing and protection of privacy), apply consistently and justifiably to epigenetic information.

Other ongoing projects include empirical studies of the ethical and social acceptability of implementing non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in Canada. Charles sits on the Executive Committee of the new Canadian Journal of Bioethics. He is also an active member of the Bioethics Workgroup of the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC).

Dr. Audrey Lebret investigates the interactions between new technologies, biomedicine and human rights, at the Center for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law (CeBIL), Copenhagen University. She is currently working on AI@Care, a collaborative project with data scientists to identify sources of bias and discrimination in healthcare algorithms, with the aim to develop guidelines to prevent them. In particular, she investigates the notion of discrimination in international and comparative law as legal constraints playing on the design and use of algorithms. Among other topics in international and comparative law, her prior research concerned the interactions between human rights in organ transplantation norms. She also worked on end-of-life decision-making, right to try experimental treatments in Europe and the US, reproductive technologies, privacy and the internet, same-sex marriage etc. Audrey’s education is both in law and in management. She obtained her doctorat en droit at Panthéon-Assas University (Paris Human Rights Center). Among other topics, she teaches Health and Human Rights and European Court of Human Rights.

Azhar Nartai is a candidate for a Ph.D. in Law at the International Kazakh-Turkish University. During her doctorate, she investigates the human genome's legal status in Kazakhstan and the Central Asia region. She previously obtained a master's degree focusing on Human Cloning's legal issues in Kazakhstan’s criminal law. She later contributed to the development of board games that teach children and students the basics of genomics research as part of a state's program in the Republic of Kazakhstan. She is currently a member of the World Association of Medical Law and a Senior Lector teaching “International Genomics”.

Ma’n H. Zawati (LL.B., LL.M., Ph.D. (DCL)) is an Assistant Professor at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine and the Executive Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy in the Department of Human Genetics. He is also an Associate Member of McGill’s Biomedical Ethics Unit. His research concentrates on the legal, ethical and policy dimensions of health research and clinical care, with a special focus on biobanking, data sharing, professional liability, and the use of novel technologies (e.g. mhealth apps, WGS, WES) in both the clinical and research settings. Dr. Zawati is funded by Genome Canada, Genome Quebec and the Terry Fox Research Institute. His work is interdisciplinary, drawing together perspectives from law, ethics, bioinformatics, genomics, and policy. He’s also a frequent presenter on a variety of the most critical and topical issues in healthcare and the biosciences. He has appeared at 100+ international conferences, symposia, meetings, and has shared his expertise with universities, research ethics boards and law firms. Dr. Zawati has published 13 book chapters and 45+ peer reviewed articles in leading publications such as Nature Reviews Genetics, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, the Journal of Medical Genetics, and the McGill Journal of Law and Health. In 2015, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship (stay at Oxford University) and was named a Royal Society of Canada Delegate for the IAP Young Scientists of the Year international symposium. In 2014, the Young Bar Association of Montreal named him as one of its Lawyers of the Year.