Research and Education
Education
2019 - 2023: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), philosophy, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland
- Recipient of the Science Foundation Ireland D-REAL Scholarship
2017 - 2019: Master’s of Science (MSc), biomedical science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands
- Recipient of the Utrecht Excellence Scholarship
2013 - 2017: Bachelor of Arts (BA), biochemistry (major) and music (minor), Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, the United States of America
- Magna cum laude
- Phi Beta Kappa member (top 10% of students in the United States)
- Recipient of the Sarah Williston Award (top 15% of class)
Research
2023 - 2025: Postdoctoral Researcher in AI Ethics, Web Information Systems Group,Department of Software Technology,TU Delft, Delft, the Netherlands
2019: Visiting PhD Researcher, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Group, Vrije Universities Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Research: Design a Mock App Store to test a value-centered privacy assistant
2019 - 2023: PhD Candidate in AI Ethics and Data Privacy, Department of Philosophy and the Data Science Institute, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland
2018 - 2019: Research Intern, Medical Humanities, UMC Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Research: Ethics and Governance of Organoid Biobanking for the HIT-CF Project; Alternative Ethical Oversight of Organoids in Precision Medicine for Rare Disease Research; A Proposal for Ethical Oversight of Organoids in Precision Medicine
- 2017 - 2018: Research Intern, Regenerative Medicine, UMC Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Research: Drug Repurposing for Cystic Fibrosis using the Intestinal Organoid Model
- 2016: Summer Undergraduate Research Assistant (SURP) Intern, Department of Cancer Systems Imaging, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, the United States of America
Research: Metabolic Comparison of Intestinal Crypt Organoids to Murine Crypts via NMR Metabolomics**
- 2015 - 2017: Undergraduate Research Assistant, Organic Chemistry, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, the United States of America
Research: Development and Optimization of a Key Nitration Reaction; Selective Capture of a Transient Sulfenic Acid Species**
- 2014: Summer Intern, Essentia Health, Duluth, Minnesota, the United States
- Research: Internal validation of a new HPV assay for medical molecular biology laboratory use**
The Story: A Biomedical Scientist turned Ethicist
My journey into ethics started, perhaps surprisingly, with a deep love of animals and a strong desire to reduce their suffering. At age 12, I became vegetarian (now vegan) and started advocating for an end to Canada’s yearly harp seal hunt. Later, I became interested in reducing animal use in biomedical research. My exploration of animal alternatives began with a course in bioethics at Northwestern University (Chicago) as a high school student, where we debated the ethics of biomedical animal use.
Later, at Mount Holyoke College, I expanded on my major in biochemistry by taking courses such as Law and the Non-Human, an anthropology course that discussed the evolution of views concerning non-human animals before the law. For my final project, I wrote a 20-page thesis analyzing changing ethical, legal and policy opinions surrounding the use of chimpanzees in medical research. Initially unable to find bench work that fit my non-animal interests, I primarily focused my research on chemistry, but always kept my eyes on the literature for new animal reducing technologies such as organ-on-chips and 3D stirred cultures. While reading the literature, I became even more interested in these alternative technologies not only to reduce animal use, but also as a means to improve disease research for patients.
These interest led me to a summer research internship in the lab of Prof. Dr. Pratip Bhattacharya at MD Anderson Cancer Center (Texas). It was during my work there that I first learned about organoids and read the work of Prof. Dr. Hans Clevers, which eventually evolved into an inquisitive fascination with organoid technology. Spurred on by this newfound passion, I decided to switch both academic disciplines and countries to study organoids in Utrecht. This began at UMC Utrecht in the lab of Dr. Jeffrey Beekman, who uses intestinal gut organoids of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) to screen for potential new therapeutics. While there, I not only learned the technical aspects of organoid technology, but also learned about the challenges of using organoids in biomedical research.
While I valued the technical laboratory experience I gained from working in the Beekman group, I desired to investigate more societally oriented questions related to science. Following this motivation, I decided to explore the medical ethics field and began my second Master’s internship at UMC Utrecht in the group of Prof. Dr. Annelien Bredenoord. During this internship, I collaborated with Michael Lensink and Dr. Karin Jongsma to investigate perspectives on the ethics and governance of organoid biobanking for the European-wide CF organoid screening initiative (HIT-CF). I also explored the ethical challenges of organoids through thorough self-study of the relevant literature and assisted in publishing our results. In addition, I conducted a literature review on different healthcare models and their compatibility with organoid technology from an ethical standpoint with Dr. Sarah Boers. This led me to explore the complex integration of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) learning system, including considerable ethical concerns around privacy, consent, and ethical review.
After taking this step from the laboratory into ethics, I had found my niche at the intersection of science and society. I could also see how AI and data were raising novel ethical challenges in bioethics and wished to pursue this further. I therefore decided to do yet another pivot, this time smaller, to the realm of AI ethics and data ethics. During my interdisciplinary PhD at the University of Galway (between philosophy and computer science), I worked with my supervisors Dr. Heike Felzmann, Prof. Dr. Mathieu D’Aquin, Prof. Dr. Kathryn Cormican, and Dr. Dave Lewis to explore how to promote more meaningful, value-centered, privacy decisions. Central to this research was how to utilize technology to serve people through an emphasis on their needs and values. The project had both conceptual and applied components: 1.) conceptualizing the link between personal values and data privacy decisions as well as strengthening the normative argumentation for why we should promote privacy decisions that adhere with our personal values; and 2.) utilizing these insights to inform the design of a digital smartphone assistant to help us make more value-centered privacy decisions. Both conceptual and applied components were informed by the people at the center of privacy decision-making by conducting surveys and qualitative interviews to understand how we value privacy.
For my PhD position, I also, again, had to familiarize myself with new literature in a variety of disciplines, including philosophy and ethics of technology, psychology, law, and computer science. To collaborate with AI scientists to build a value-centered privacy assistant and testing environment, I also learned the basics of Python and machine learning. In addition, my interdisciplinary communication skills, honed by these experiences, allowed me to present at international conferences to diverse audiences and to create a network of international, interdisciplinary colleagues.
Doctorate in hand, I had now established myself as an applied ethicist. I next took the step to TU Delft and became a postdoctoral researcher in AI Ethics (funded by the Dutch National Digital Society Program). In this role, I continued to conduct interdisciplinary research at the intersection of science and society. This included working on human autonomy in AI decision support and mental health chatbot design; contrastive explanations and AI explainability; and AI fairness from a feminist perspective.
For more on the research presented here, be sure to check out the Publications tab at the top of the website!