Congratulations to Dr. Judy Illes, who was recently elected as a 2024 fellow of the Hastings Center. Hastings Center fellows are a group of about 300 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed scholarship and public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, science and technology.
“Our new fellows are leaders in a wide range of areas of global importance, including ethical issues in infectious disease outbreaks, AI in health, neuroscience, reproductive rights, genetics and race, and disability,” said Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky. “I welcome them and look forward to working with them.”
Dr. Illes is a professor of neurology, Distinguished University Scholar, and Distinguished Professor in Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia. She is director of Neuroethics Canada and faculty in the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health and at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. In addition, she holds associate appointments in Population and Public Health and in Journalism at UBC and in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Illes is a pioneer in the field of neuroethics. Her research, teaching, and outreach initiatives are devoted to ethical, legal, social and policy challenges at the intersection of the brain sciences and biomedical ethics. She has made groundbreaking contributions to neuroethical thinking for neuroscience discovery and clinical translation across the life span, and to entrepreneurship and the commercialization of health care.
Dr. Illes has also held many leadership positions. She serves as Chair of the International Brain Initiative, co-Lead of the Canadian Brain Research Strategy, expert consultant to UNESCO and WHO on the ethics of neurotechnology, as the expert advisor to EuroBioImaging, and as a member of the Ethics, Law and Humanities Committee of the American Academy of Neurology. Most recently, she became Vice Chair of the newly incorporated Bioethics Council for Canada. She held the Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics from 2007 to 2021. In 2017, Dr. Illes was awarded the Order of Canada, the country’s highest recognition of its citizens.
Read the original announcement on the Hastings Center website
