Insoo Hyun

Visiting Professor

Profile

Insoo Hyun, PhD, is Senior Researcher at the Hastings Center for Bioethics and an Affiliate of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School. He is the former Director of Research Ethics at Harvard Medical School and taught as a Senior Lecturer in HMS’ Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. Prior to his appointments at Harvard, Dr. Hyun was Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where he taught undergraduate, graduate, and medical students for over 18 years.

Dr. Hyun’s research interests include stem cell ethics and policy, the clinical translation and ethical implementation of emerging technologies such as bio- and tissue-engineering, and medical AI. In recent years, he was Principal Investigator of an NIH BRAIN Initiative-funded project exploring the scientific and ethical issues surrounding human brain organoid research, in collaboration with labs headed by Harvard’s Paola Arlotta and George Church and Stanford’s Sergiu Pasca. He also was the PI on a Greenwall Foundation grant exploring the ethics of new bioengineering tools, including stem cell-based embryo models, in collaboration with Jianping Fu from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

He received his BA and MA in Philosophy with Honors in Ethics in Society from Stanford University and his PhD in Philosophy from Brown University. He is a regular contributor to Nature, Science, Cell Stem Cell, and many other academic journals. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Springer Nature book series Collaborative Bioethics, where his co-edited volume Human Brain Organoids: Scientific and Ethical Considerations was published in 2024. His book Bioethics and the Future of Stem Cell Research was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.