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About the Exchange
The Princeton Bioethics Exchange (PBE) offers graduate and postdoctoral students across all university disciplines an opportunity to cultivate ethical awareness, reflection, and practical resources for addressing the ethical ramifications of their research and resulting policy. 

Sponsorship
The Princeton Bioethics Exchange is co-sponsored by the CST, the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, the Princeton Faith & Work Initiative, and GradFUTURES.

Sample of Past Speakers & Topics: 

  • José Avalos (Associate Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment), The Ethical Questions of GMOs
  • Karishma Biht (Postdoc in MOL), The Ethics of Selective Mandatory Vaccination
  • Laura Buddenbaum (Princeton Center for Health and Wellbeing), Closing the Health Coverage Gap for Non-Citizens
  • Jonathan Conway (Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering), From Lab Bench to Corn Field: Ethical Questions in Agricultural Microbial Engineering
  • Molly Crockett (Professor, PSY), Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research (read a student's perspective)
  • Madeleine Chalifoux (GS CBE), Should research that could potentially enable bioterrorism be made openly accessible?
  • James J. Collins (Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT), The Rising Tide of Biotechnology: How can we align scientific progress with public interest?
  • Katie Donnelly *23 (Postdoctoral Research Associate in Princeton University’s Global Health Program), Bioethics of Evidence-Based Medicine: When Ethos Trumps Logos
  • Eric Franklin (Graduate student in MOL), Genetic Privacy and Public Policy
  • Jianping Fu (BME, UMichigan) Bioengineering Human Embryos and Organ Models (read a student's perspective)
  • Hank Greely (Stanford) Exciting - and Frightening - New Paths in Bioscience (read a student's perspective)
  • Brooke Holmes (Professor of Classics) The Classical Life of Bio-Ethics and Future Flourishing
  • Heather Howard (SPIA), Heath Care (Un)Affordability in the US
  • Jeffrey Lee (Graduate student in MOL) Human augmentation and enhancement.
  • Ezra Levy (Graduate student in MOL) Uncertainty in genetics: prime editing and polygenicity.
  • Abby Notterman J.D. (Bioethicist and lawyer)  Past, Present, and Future of Bioethics in Research (read a student's perspective)
  • Ian Peebles (Postdoctoral Research Associate in Bioethics, Center for Human Values), What is the Role of Virtue in Good Medicine? – Some Methodological Considerations
  • Emily Singer (Graduate student in MOL), From Lab Bench to Corn Field: Ethical Questions in Agricultural Microbial Engineering
  • Hansen Tjo (Graduate Student in CBE) Food or fuel? Analyzing the tradeoffs in allocating agricultural resources, and the impact of new (bio)technologies on food and fuel production.
  • Eric F. Wieschaus (Professor of Molecular Biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Emeritus; Nobel Prize Winner, 1995) Science, Bioethics, and Uncertainty
  • Jiayi Zhang (Graduate student in QCB) The use of animal models in research.

Origins
In September 2022, Prof. Cliff Brangwynne (Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute) invited PBE advisor Penelope Georges (Council on Science and Technology) and David Miller (Faith & Work Initiative, Keller Center) to coordinate a discussion welcoming the inaugural Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling Lecture in Ethics and Policy in Bioengineering. The interest generated led to the launch of The Exchange in Fall 2023, thanks to the efforts of Ezra Levy (Ph.D. candidate, Molecular Biology) and Madeleine Chalifoux (Ph.D. candidate, Chemical and Biological Engineering).

Learn More

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