Insoo Hyun
Professor
Profile
Insoo Hyun is Professor in the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at NUS and Senior Researcher at the Hastings Center for Bioethics. He is the former Director of Research Ethics at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics and was a Senior Lecturer in Harvard’s 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.
Dr. Hyun has been heavily involved with the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) since 2005, where he has helped draft each version of the ISSCR Guidelines. He has served twice as Chair of the ISSCR Ethics Committee, where he has led the publication of several influential white papers on chimera research and nuclear transplantation. In 2026 Dr. Hyun became Co-Chair of the ISSCR Education Committee, where he helped to design and deliver the ISSCR’s and Harvard Medical School’s joint online continuing medical education course Stem Cell Medicine: From Scientific Research to Patient Care.
Dr. Hyun 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 has been interviewed frequently on National Public Radio and has served on national commissions for the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and the Institute of Medicine in Washington D.C. 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.