UC San Francisco Humanities & Social Sciences in the School of Medicine
Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public
Dr. 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).
Dr. Brown was one of the Kavli Center's inaugural Postdoctoral Fellows where she workshopped her research findings on the complex intersection between scientific, clinical, patient, and societal values. This included designing...
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...
José Muñoz, PhD, is a philosopher and biologist interested in the ethical implications of neurotechnology. He was a research fellow in radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and a research fellow in neuroethics at the University of Navarra and the International Center for Neuroscience and Ethics (CINET) in Spain. He was also an assistant professor of psychology at the European University of Valencia, in Spain, and a visiting researcher at the National Institute of Criminal Sciences (INACIPE) in Mexico. His project at the Kavli Center was intended to...
Affiliated Faculty; Rita Allen Civic Science Fellow
University of San Francisco, Department of Neuroscience
Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public
Narayan Sankaran, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of San Francisco in the Neuroscience Department where his research spans both neuroscience and neuroethics. As a neuroscientist, his research seeks a mechanistic account of how the human auditory system enables perception of complex sounds – such as music and speech. To do this, he combines computational modeling, machine learning, and human neurophysiological measurements at different spatial scales using both intracranial and scalp-based recording techniques. As a neuroethicist, his research considers the ethical and...
Arik Shams, PhD, is interested in the intersections of genome editing, bioethics, and science policy. As a Kavli Ethics, Science, and the Public Fellow, Shams expanded his training further into policy and ethics, working on projects with an emphasis on CRISPR technology implementation in agriculture and energy, capacity-building to mitigate global food insecurity, and training new scientists in issues of science justice, bioethics, and social impact. Shams received a B.S. from the University of Southern Mississippi, and did two years of post-baccalaureate research at the National Institute of...
