We are pleased to announce the Greenwall Faculty Scholars
Class of 2014-2017
Gidon Felsen, PhD (molecular and cell biology) is Assistant Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. His project is “Decision Making: From Neuroscience to Public Policy.” Prof. Felsen’s primary research is in basic neuroscience. He believes that understanding how the normal, healthy brain accomplishes some of the complex functions it does, is necessary for allowing us to ultimately treat the disordered brain and prevent disorders. Prof. Felsen’s project aims to inject a novel and important perspective – the neuroscience underlying decision making – into the intense debate over the effectiveness and ethics of strategies for improving decisions, ultimately grounding the debate in neurobiological evidence.
Lori Freedman, PhD (Sociology) is Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. Her project is “Informed Consent for Catholic Hospital Patients Regarding Effects of Doctrine on Care.” While there is much debate regarding religion and the beginning of life, the patient’s perspective on the treatment of miscarriages has largely been absent. With expanding Catholic health network ownership and a potentially restricted provider list in light of ACA, how Catholic doctrine affects the treatment and care of women during a miscarriage will be an important issue. One of the goals of her project is to develop and validate a meaningful informed consent tool that can convey specific differences of Catholic hospital ob-gyn care to prenatal patients.
Efthimios Parasidis, JD, MBE is Assistant Professor of Law and Public Health at The Ohio State University. His project is ” The Military Biomedical Complex: How National Security Impacts Military Medicine And Research.” The proliferation of innovative medical products and biomedical enhancements raises significant clinical, bioethical, and legal concerns, particularly in the military context when a goal of the U.S. Department of Defense is to create soldiers with superior physical, physiological, and cognitive abilities. In his research, Prof. Parasidis discovered that in the name of national security, the law embeds military command structure into military medicine and prevents injured service members from seeking redress through the courts. With this in mind, Prof. Parasidis will undertake a book project, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. The goal of his book is to motivate a debate on military medical ethics by proposing public policy reforms. He has written on military research and research ethics previously.