Ilina Bhaya-Grossman is a PhD candidate in Dr. Edward Chang’s lab at UCSF where she studies how the human brain processes language, with a particular focus on how brain activity is affected by cross linguistic differences. She studies this question by working with patient populations who have undergone an invasive implantation procedure as part of their clinical care. As a neuroscientist who interfaces directly with patients, Ilina is interested in the language we use to communicate science to human study participants and the public at large. To this end, she has been involved in several...
UC San Francisco Humanities & Social Sciences in the School of Medicine
Julia Brown is an anthropologist and bioethicist who examines lived experiences and social value-making around controversial biotechnologies. She is currently exploring the ethics of prenatal gene technologies, including the emergence of prenatal gene editing. She is author of The Clozapine Clinic: Health Agency in High-Risk conditions (Routledge 2022).
Brown was one of the Kavli Center's inaugural Postdoctoral Fellows, where she worked on her research findings on the complex intersection between scientific, clinical, patient, and societal values. This included designing community...
Juliana Chase participated in the inaugural fellows cohort as a 5th year PhD student in Behavioral & Systems Neuroscience at UC Berkeley. Juliana’s dissertation work employed experimental and computational techniques to better understand neural circuit differences in mouse models of autism. Throughout her PhD, Juliana has been interested in what happens when science leaves the lab and has been engaged with science policy and outreach organizations on campus. As a fellow, Juliana built on her experience as an organizer and science communicator to explore how scientists can partner with...
Technology Ethics Center, University of Notre Dame
Georgina Curto conducts interdisciplinary research on artificial intelligence to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She works closely with NGOs and government officials to provide new insights for local and global challenges, while contributing to the AI state of the art. She was awarded, together with the article co-authors, Best AI for Good Project in the last International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI’22) for the work on AI simulations and poverty reduction policy making. She has also published on the use of machine learning (NLP) to generate indexes on...
James Evershed uses formal tools to tackle problems in areas of ethics including our duties to help those in need, the right to privacy, population ethics, axiology, animal ethics, equality, and desert. James is passionate about working on real-world issues and was drawn to the Kavli Center by its commitment to helping technological advances be beneficial to everyone.
During the Kavli Ethics, Science, and the Public Graduate Fellowship James hopes to work on: (1) the implications of predictive algorithms for our privacy; (2) whether the control problem for artificial intelligence...
Chad Harper is a PhD candidate in Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, with a research focus on complex network dynamics and biological computation. Chad’s work spans multiple fields, from computational neuroscience and category theory to machine learning theory and bioethics, driven by a commitment to ethical, analytically-driven decision-making. His recent collaborations with Stanford’s Currie Lab explore ethical frameworks for organ transplant allocation, addressing social disparities in wait times and outcomes. Previously, Chad applied interdisciplinary analysis as a data...
Jen Holmberg is a Neuroscience PhD student conducting psilocybin research at UC Berkeley with the Center for the Science of Psychedelics (co-advised by Professors Jack Gallant and Michael Silver). Jen’s research is focused on understanding the brain mechanisms that mediate the psychedelic experience. Specifically, Jen uses fMRI, naturalistic stimuli, and computational models to investigate how psilocybin affects visual information processing in the brain during the acute drug experience.
In recent years, psychedelics have made a significant resurgence in public discourse, primarily...
Nicholas Karavolias, PhD, was among the Kavli Center's first graduate student Fellows. Upon finishing his PhD in the Plant and Microbial Biology Department, he transitioned to a postdoctoral position in Brian Staskawicz's lab while continuing his work with the Kavli Center as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Broadly, Nicholas's research focuses on the applications of gene editing in agriculture focusing on climate change adaptation. In the lab, he uses CRISPR/Cas9 to understand the development of stomata in rice for improved drought resilience. Nicholas has experience teaching about gene...
From the very start, the development of the human brain is coordinated by highly specialized gene expression patterns that continue to change not only in prenatal, childhood, or adolescent stages, but also well into adulthood. Leana King's thesis work in the Cognitive Neuroanatomy Lab (P.I. Kevin Weiner) aims to examine this dynamic relationship between gene expression and brain development. As a 4th year PhD student, King's interest in the field of genetics has also grown. From starting out in perceptual and computational neuroscience to now relating development and neuroanatomy to...
Michal Masny, PhD, is a philosopher with research interests in normative ethics, political philosophy, bioethics, and technology ethics. His doctoral work addressed the moral significance of the past, the nature of well-being, and the long-term future of humanity.
At the Kavli Center, Michal examined the impact of technology on human well-being. His current research focuses on: first, developments in geroscience that have the potential to significantly increase our lifespans and second, developments in artificial intelligence and robotics that could render humans obsolete in...
