Jeantine Lunshof

Jeantine’s research interests are concerned with philosophical research ethics in the field of synthetic biology and biologically inspired engineering where disruptive technological innovations call for epistemological and normative exploration.

She conducts her philosophical and ethical work as a full-time philosopher and ethicist on the workfloor of the lab. As a collaborator of George Church in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School she developed the model of ‘Collaborative Ethics’ that she is currently implementing in various projects at the cutting edge of genomic sciences and biological engineering, including neuroengineering and connectomics research of the human brain (with MIT). Recent work has been on questions related to nervous system organoids, AI-designed biological systems, xenobiology, and mirror biology including synthetic cell research.

Jeantine’s interest in philosophical ethics includes questions pertaining to collaboration and complicity, in particular related to the work of scientists and the ethicist-scientist relations.

Jeantine was awarded a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship (2013-2015) for the study of conceptual and normative questions in systems biology and the shifting concepts of disease. In 2024 she was named a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow. Jeantine teaches the annual graduate course Responsible Conduct of Science at the Division of Medical Sciences at HMS.

Jeantine has research collaborations with the University of Washington (Expanding DNA-alphabets/xenobiology), Arizona State University (mirror biology, governance & biosafety), and VU University Amsterdam where she is supervising a PhD project on RR&I in the development of cell and gene therapies for hereditary anemias (sickle cell disease).