Renowned ethicist to head NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics
Published: 02 Aug 2022
Professor Julian Savulescu
Photo Credits: David Fisher
One of the world’s foremost scholars in the field of biomedical ethics has been appointed to head the Centre for Biomedical Ethics (CBmE) at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine).
Professor Julian Savulescu, currently the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics and Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford since 2002, brings immense expertise and deep scholarship in the discipline to NUS Medicine as the Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor. His initial three-year appointment as the Director of CBmE at NUS Medicine begins on 28 August 2022. Trained in medicine, neuroscience and bioethics, the Australian articulated the principle of procreative beneficence. His research interests span a range of topics in medical ethics, and include the ethics of genetics and other new or emerging technologies.
Prof Savulescu holds multiple research and teaching appointments in various institutions and is also a Co-Director of the Wellcome Trust Strategic Centre for Ethics and Humanities. He was a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator on Responsibility and Health Care, as well as previously directing the Oxford Martin Programme for Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. He is also Distinguished International Visiting Professor in Law at the University of Melbourne, and Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
Human agency and freedom of choice is a leitmotif that underpins his work. Referring to a Wellcome Trust funded project on people’s responsibility and healthcare in an interview for his alma mater, Monash University, in 2015, Prof Savulescu pointed to people’s lifestyle choices being highly significant and increasing contributors to the global burden of disease.
In 2018, the self-confessed avid skier and surfer concluded seven years as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, the highest impact journal in the field. He is founding editor of the Journal of Practical Ethics, an open access journal in Practical Ethics. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bucharest in 2014.
Professor Chong Yap Seng, Dean of NUS Medicine, and Lien Ying Chow Professor in Medicine, said, “With the rapid and continuing advances the world has made in genomics, precision medicine, big data, and artificial intelligence, we now have an unprecedented opportunity to drastically improve people’s lives with new health approaches and technologies. But to reap these benefits, the ethics of today must be updated. We must also address structural and social factors that increasingly contribute to disease, such as limitations of access and social disadvantage. Prof Savulescu’s cutting-edge work in practical ethics will help Singapore address many of these challenges.”
Prof Savulescu added, “The National University of Singapore is a great university of the present; it will be an even greater university of the future. My goal is to make ethics front and centre of that future. I aim to make the NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics the leading centre in Asia and thus in the world. Ethics is important to every person and institution, every day. It is the basis of our humanity. I aim to provide the skills and training to people to identify and think more deeply about ethical issues for themselves.”
Read more in the press release here.
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