Vardit Ravitsky

Background

About Vardit Ravitsky

Vardit Ravitsky is President and CEO of the Hastings Center for Bioethics, an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute that is among the most prestigious bioethics and health policy institutes in the world. She is a Senior Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and past Full Professor at the Bioethics Program, School of Public Health, University of Montreal. She is Past-President of the International Association of Bioethics, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of The Hastings Center. Ravitsky’s research focuses on the ethics of genomics and reproduction, as well as the use of AI in biomedical research. It is funded by Canada’s leading funding agencies (CIHR, FRQSC, SSHRC, Genome Canada, and Genome Quebec) and the NIH. She published over 200 articles and commentaries on bioethical issues, and has given over 300 talks world-wide and over 400 media interviews. Her research covers a variety of topics such as: public funding of In-Vitro Fertilization; the use of surplus frozen embryos; posthumous reproduction; pre-implantation genetic testing; gamete donation; epigenetics; prenatal testing, in particular the ethical, social, and legal aspects of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT); germline and somatic gene editing; mitochondrial replacement, and the use of Artificial Intelligence in biomedical research. She has been involved in research and policy regarding pandemic ethics and was heavily engaged in public outreach during COVID-19. Ravitsky is a Principal Investigator on two Bridge2AI research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health that expand the use of AI in biomedical and behavioral research. She served on the steering committee of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) to develop an Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct (AICC). Ravitsky holds a BA from the Sorbonne University in Paris, an MA from the University of New Mexico in the US, and a PhD from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Previously, she was Fellow at the Department of Bioethics at the NIH and faculty at the Department of Medical Ethics, School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also a Senior Policy Advisor at CIHR's Ethics Office and a GE3LS consultant to Genome Canada (GE3LS = genomics and its ethical, economic, environmental, legal, and social implications).