Vardit Ravitsky PhD

Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, is President and CEO of the Hastings Center, 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. Previously, she was a 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 for Bioethics.

Ravitsky’s research focuses on the ethics of genomics and reproduction, as well as the ethics and governance of health AI. She is particularly interested in the various ways in which cultural frameworks shape public debate and public policy around bioethical issues. Her work has been funded by Canada’s national and provincial funding agencies and is currently funded by the NIH and by leading Foundations. She has published over 250 articles and commentaries on bioethical issues and has given over 300 talks worldwide and over 400 media interviews.

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 a 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 consultant to Genome Canada on Ethical, Economic, Environmental, legal, and Social aspects of Genomics Research (GE3LS).