Barbara J. Evans is a Professor of Law and Stephen C. O’Connell Chair at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and Professor of Engineering at the University of Florida Wertheim College of Engineering. Professor Evans has published widely in law journals and peer-reviewed scientific, medical, and ethics journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature Medicine, American Journal of Bioethics, Genetics in Medicine, American Journal of Human Genetics, Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, and Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Professor Evans collaborates with multidisciplinary teams of ethicists, scientists, medical researchers, and engineers on a wide variety of research projects sponsored by the National Institutes of Health/National Human Genome Research Institute/National Cancer Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. She was named a Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholar in Bioethics for 2010-2013.
Professor Evans is a Member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Standing Committee on Aerospace Medicine and the Medicine of Extreme Environments and is serving on an Expert Advisory Panel convened by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to advise on Artificial Intelligence in Health Care. She has served on National Academies Committees for studies of ethics principles and health standards for long-duration human spaceflights such as trips to Mars; future biotechnology products and the regulatory challenges they present; access to hearing health care for adults; and the public health effectiveness of the FDA’s medical device regulations. She has served on multiple panels and committees to support the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, including ten years’ service on the Privacy Panel for the FDA Sentinel System, a large-scale pharmacoepidemiological data network.
Professor Evans is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and is admitted to the practice of law in New York and Texas. Before coming to academia, she worked as an engineer in the energy industry, as an infrastructure economist at the World Bank, and as a Moscow-based partner in the international regulatory practice of a large New York law firm. She taught law and engineering at the University of Houston from 2007-2020 and served as Co-director of their Health Law & Policy Institute and Director of their Center for Biotechnology & Law.