Jeantine Lunshof

Philosopher, Ethicist - Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
Senior Research Scientist, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School; Visiting Researcher, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
Visiting Scholar Department of Cell Biology, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Jeantine Lunshof
Wyss Institute Profile

 

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 across the field of biologically inspired engineering at the Wyss Institute. Recent work has been on questions related to nervous system organoids and AI-designed biological systems.

Jeantine’s interest in philosophical ethics is in questions pertaining to collaboration and complicity, in particular related to the work of scientists.

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.