PicturePhoto by Susan Blackburn
Michelle N. Meyer, PhD, JD, is an Assistant Professor and Associate Director, Research Ethics, in the Center for Translational Bioethics and Health Care Policy at Geisinger Health System. In addition to pursuing her own research, she chairs the IRB Leadership Committee, directs the Research Ethics Advice and Consulting Service, plays a leading role in advancing Geisinger as a learning health system, and leads the Meyer Lab. 

Immediately before joining the faculty at Geisinger, Michelle was an Assistant Professor and Director of Bioethics Policy in the Clarkson University–Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bioethics Program and Adjunct Faculty at Albany Law School, where she taught Law and Bioethics, Public Health Ethics, Advanced Bioethics Policy: Philosophical, Economic, and Psychological Foundations, and a survey of contemporary policy issues in the biosciences. Previously, she was an Academic Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, a Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy at The Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities, and a Research Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Michelle's writing at the intersection of science and society has appeared in leading journals of bioethics (American Journal of Bioethics, Hastings Center Report, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal), law (Harvard Law Review, Administrative Law Review), and science (Nature), as well as in popular media outlets (New York Times, Slate, Wired, Los Angeles Times, and Forbes, where she is a regular contributor). She currently sits on the editorial board of Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, the Board of Directors of Open Humans Foundation (formerly PersonalGenomes.org), a nonprofit organization that has developed novel ways of managing the ethical, legal, and technical aspects of creating open access repositories of highly identifiable human genomic data; the Advisory Board of the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium; and the Scientific Advisory Board of Making Science Less WEIRD. Michelle blogs at Harvard Law School's Bill of Health and The Faculty Lounge.

Michelle earned a Ph.D. in religious studies, with a focus on practical ethics, from the University of Virginia under the supervision of James F. Childress and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and a founding co-editor of the Harvard Law Review Forum. Following law school, she clerked for Judge Stanley Marcus of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College, where she studied religious studies, philosophy, and creative nonfiction.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Law and bioethics, in particular:
  • Responsible conduct of research (biomedical, social science, corporate), including: human subjects research; learning healthcare systems; the role of IRBs and alternative bodies and processes for overseeing various learning activities; replication; deidentification, re-identification, and data sharing; science communication
  • Genetics/genomics, including genetic privacy, genetic discrimination, and "reprogenethics" (e.g., prenatal testing, PGD, genetic modification)
  • Reproduction and reproductive technologies (e.g., abortion, frozen embryo disputes, posthumous pregnancy)
  • Implications of behavioral science for law and bioethics and legal and ethical aspects of behavioral regulation and policy (e.g., "nudges")
  • Legal and ethical issues in evidence-based medicine, policies, laws, and other practices
  • mHealth, telemedicine, eConsent, and e-Research
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