examples of research ethics violation

Human Research Violations By UCSD Eye Doctor Showcase A National Problem

Tens of millions of people have volunteered their time and bodies to help create breakthroughs in medicine. You see the results with the pain relievers in your medicine cabinet, the vaccines that protect you from disease, the pacemakers that keep your heart beating and the innovations happening now with stem cells.

Yet the systems meant to protect those volunteers from harm are far from perfect, and research violations by Dr. Kang Zhang , an eye doctor at the University of California San Diego, show just how easily that well-intentioned framework can collapse.

Zhang is the chief of eye genetics at UCSD and has a lab named after him at the university. He receives millions of dollars in federal grants and presents at symposiums around the world.

A few years ago, he helped develop a way to remove cataracts from infants and regenerate their lenses using their own stem cells. He also built a tool that scanned over a million patient records and diagnosed illnesses with more than 90% accuracy.

But several of Zhang’s studies were riddled with violations of basic human research standards. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration warning in 2017 and a UCSD audit that followed reveal a pattern that put patients in harm’s way for years.

The 56-year-old doctor enrolled people he shouldn’t have for his medical trials, failed to document what happened to 25 units of a study drug, performed HIV tests on participants without their permission, kept poor records on his patients and didn’t complete necessary ethics training for a stem cell study.

When asked by the FDA to create a plan to prevent more violations from happening in the future, Zhang didn’t provide one.

“There ought to be some serious penalties for this sort of thing,” said Spencer Hey, a Harvard Medical School expert in biomedical research ethics.

inewsource reached out to Zhang, the director of the eye institute where he works and the director of UCSD’s human research protection program for interviews. In response, UCSD sent a statement that said the university had “implemented a comprehensive management plan to address these issues” and suspended Zhang indefinitely from serving as a primary researcher overseeing human research studies at UCSD. He may continue to apply for federal grants, publish in medical journals and train the next generation of scientists.

UCSD later told inewsource , “Zhang’s research had undergone multiple audits since 2012,” which prompted his suspension. When asked if that meant the university had known about Zhang’s violations for five years before taking action, a UCSD spokeswoman would not comment further.

After speaking with five ethics experts for this story, it appears Zhang’s violations — and what happened after they were discovered — are symptomatic of larger problems impacting the field of human subject research in the U.S. Those include patchwork oversight and poor communication between watchdog agencies, a lack of transparency and dialogue with the public, and a combination of money and prestige that sometimes safeguard an institution’s reputation more than patient welfare.

“Science is accelerating always,” said Stacey Springs , Harvard University’s research integrity officer. “But it feels that it’s accelerating in ways that are pushing on regulatory compliance like never before. So we really need to focus now, and learn from each other, and apply these best practices – because it's coming fast.”

An early warning

Zhang received his medical degree and doctorate in genetics from Harvard, then taught at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Utah before founding UCSD’s Institute for Genomic Medicine in 2009.

His accomplishments have landed him on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. He’s received dozens of honors from national and international associations and universities, published or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts in top journals and recruited human research subjects from around the world – including from the San Diego VA and UCSD’s Shiley Eye Institute on the La Jolla campus.

It was during Zhang’s time at the institute, in the summer of 2016, when the FDA inspected one of his ongoing human trials to ensure the “rights, safety, and welfare” of his patients were protected.

For five years, Zhang had been testing a drug to reverse the effects of a common age-related eye disease. He received approval to enroll patients whose vision had already started to decline – to see if the drug could restore their sight.

Zhang’s research team injected ranibizumab once a month into each test subject’s eyes, 12 times total for each patient. The drug can produce side effects that include eye haemorrhages, pain, inflammation and spots in a field of vision. In rare cases, it can prompt serious cataracts or blindness.

The FDA letter prompted UCSD to suspend enrollment in all of Zhang’s active research projects at the time, pending the results of an internal audit.

Amy Caruso Brown is an assistant professor of bioethics, humanities and pediatrics at New York’s Upstate Medical University. She also is a member of an institutional review board – a safety committee that approves and oversees projects like Zhang’s.

Brown spoke to inewsource after reading the UCSD audit and said, “I have not seen this number of issues in the five years that I've been on an IRB.”Twelve people had participated in the study by the time the FDA stepped in and found five of them were ineligible because they didn’t have the vision problems Zhang outlined for participants. Another patient’s eyesight wasn’t correctly evaluated before the person was injected with the drug.

“If it had been one out of a hundred, we could probably chalk that up to an error that doesn’t reflect a pattern of misconduct,” said Michael Carome , a former associate director at the U.S. Office for Human Research Protections, one of many federal agencies that protects human research subjects.

“But to enroll half the subjects not meeting enrollment criteria – that is more than just an occasional error. That suggests something systematically wrong with how they’re doing the research,” said Carome, who spent years investigating these kind of violations while at the agency.

He left the Office for Human Research Protections in 2010 during a decade of decline, when the office all but stopped using its enforcement tools in favor of “a more friendly approach toward institutions,” he said.

Carome is now a director of the health research group at Public Citizen , a consumer advocacy nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

He told inewsource that research on otherwise healthy patients needs to be performed carefully, because they aren’t sick enough to justify taking chances.

“Both from a scientific standpoint and ethical human subjects standpoint, not complying with the enrollment criteria is a big deal,” Carome said, calling the guidelines “crucial in terms of ensuring that human subjects are protected.”

The FDA agreed. It issued Zhang a warning letter in January 2017 that called out his use of ineligible patients and his failure to perform required screenings and procedures, poor recordkeeping and lack of documentation about what happened to 25 units of the unused study drug (which Zhang said were destroyed).

Though not mentioned in the letter, the UCSD audit that followed said Zhang also enrolled patients while the study was suspended.

The FDA uses warning letters to document serious research problems and mandate corrective actions. Three times in the letter, it told Zhang his actions raised “concerns about the validity and integrity of the data collected,” and three times it told Zhang he didn’t have an adequate plan to keep his patients safe moving forward.

“We are unable to undertake an informed evaluation of your written response because you did not provide a corrective action plan that, if properly carried out, would prevent this type of violation in the future,” the FDA wrote.

The study was eventually shut down, and inewsource could find no articles published based on the research.

‘Major league science’

Zhang’s work at UCSD should be viewed in context.

He is one of more than 1,600 faculty members in the schools of medicine and pharmacy, one part of a healthcare system at a university ranked among the top research institutions in the country.

UCSD secured $1.2 billion in sponsored research support in 2018 – with $686 million going toward UC Health Sciences – and had more than 7,000 patients participating in clinical trials. Its scientists have made breakthroughs in diabetes research, understanding cancer genes, identifying early signs of autism and treating Alzheimer’s disease. It counts 16 Nobel laureates among current and former faculty.

All of that makes UCSD’s investigation of Zhang unique. The university has published 249 internal audits since July 2010, and the Zhang report is the only one inewsource could find specific to an individual researcher.

Auditors reviewed Zhang’s training records, enrollment logs, regulatory binders and files for ongoing projects that had enrolled human research patients. They found problems everywhere they looked: Zhang failed to get the proper consent from all patients; didn’t report problems to UCSD’s institutional review board; lost documents; kept inaccurate records; wrongly billed patients; and didn’t complete the training required to work with human embryonic stem cells.

In one study, Zhang’s staff tested patients’ blood for HIV and AIDS without telling them, against federal policy.

“He’s lucky there weren’t any major patient harms,” Brown said. ”But if you act like this all the time, eventually you will hurt someone.”

The auditors found Zhang’s actions may have “negatively impacted the rights, welfare, and safety of human subjects in clinical research.” One of his studies, sponsored by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine , collected tissue from donors with blinding eye disease for a stem cell bank. California voters created the institute in 2004 to fund this type of research.

The study’s rules stated no one under 50 years old was allowed to enroll. UCSD audited files for 50 of the more than 400 patients and found seven were too young, including a minor.

Carome, the former federal director, laughed when he read that section.

“That’s not a subtle mistake,” he said.

Another finding noted the importance of “credible and valid data” when describing a study that was missing 25 of 50 patient progress reports.

“This isn’t minor league stuff. This is major league science,” said Hey, the Harvard bioethicist, who added, “this sort of pattern should raise questions about the validity of (Zhang’s) published work.”

Zhang did publish a correction in January, but not for a study included in the audit. It involved gene editing in animals, and Zhang’s paper said UCSD supervised and approved the research. That wasn’t true – it was overseen by a university and medical center in China.

inewsource couldn’t find any published articles based on the six studies reviewed by the FDA and UCSD. Yet during the audits and study suspensions, Zhang is listed as having continued a genetics research project at the San Diego VA, which did result in 10 published articles.

UCSD doctors often work as attending physi cians at the San Diego VA and share funding, research samples, data and lab space. The VA Hospital is less than a mile from the Shiley Eye Institute and on the same campus. Yet the VA said it was never notified of the UCSD or FDA reports until inewsource asked about them in March.

A VA spokeswoman would not answer questions about whether Zhang was still practicing at the VA, enrolling patients in trials or proposing new research at the institution. The San Diego VA has one of the largest research programs in the national VA network.

Nor were other related federal or state regulators notified. That includes the federal Office for Human Research Protections, which protects research subjects from harm; the National Institutes of Health , which funds many of Zhang’s studies; the Office of Research Integrity, which oversees research misconduct cases; or the California State Medical Board, which gave Zhang a license to practice medicine.

“Communication is fraught with complexity in compliance matters,” said Springs, Harvard’s research integrity officer. Things sometimes happen on a need-to-know basis, she said, and confidentiality plays a big part.

But, she said, “If there are active studies and participants are in danger, the confidentiality is out the window.”

Symptoms of a larger problem

Picture the framework for protecting research subjects as a house.

The foundation consists of a study, planned with sound scientific and ethical principles, and a responsible, ethical researcher. If and when things go wrong or change, they are communicated and addressed immediately. That didn’t happen in this case.

Institutional review boards, the first floor, are often composed of expert volunteers who spend countless hours poring over hundreds of pages of research protocols, guidelines and regulations while also working their regular jobs. They rely on researchers to keep them updated, alert them to problems and speak the truth, but they may also have the power and responsibility to audit ongoing studies. It’s often a proactive system, but it wasn’t in Zhang’s case.

And the institutional review board system is “vulnerable to unethical manipulation, particularly by companies or individuals who intend to abuse the system or to commit fraud,” according to an undercover federal investigation from 2009.

Higher-ups at an institution – the second floor – may have reasons and methods to keep violations quiet and away from public scrutiny. The Zhang audit is a perfect example: It was published more than two years ago but didn’t reach the VA across campus, never made the news, and likely wouldn’t have shocked anyone who stumbled upon it because it never named Zhang as the researcher under scrutiny. The only place his name appears is on the report’s cover page – as one of 16 people copied on its transmittal within the UC system, including UCSD’s chief ethics and compliance officer, vice chancellors, various directors and others.

“It doesn’t look good for the university to be calling out these high-profile faculty for these kinds of violations and making a big deal out of it and applying sanctions, because that’s not the kind of attention you want to draw to your researchers,” Harvard’s Hey said.

Problems with internal probes

An opinion article published by three ethics experts last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association said when internal investigations are completed, the reports are often not standardized, not peer-reviewed, have limited oversight and contain conflicts of interest. “Even when institutions act, the information they release to the public is often limited and unhelpful,” they wrote.

Calling out lucrative researchers can also result in lost funding. Last fiscal year, federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Defense gave UCSD $681 million in research funding. UCSD prides itself on how much grant money flows its way each year and has defended that stream aggressively: It sued the University of Southern California in 2015 for poaching one of its most lucrative researchers.

And as quickly as those funding agencies give, they can take away – or even require repayment if serious violations happened using taxpayer dollars.

At the very top of the house, the roof is made up of agencies that regulate human subject protection across the country. The big one – the Office for Human Research Protections – protects those involved in research funded or conducted by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. It can investigate allegations of wrongdoing but often does not, choosing instead to refer investigations back to the institutions themselves. It can also revoke an entire institution’s ability to perform human research, though that hasn’t happened since 2007.

At Harvard, Springs said she often uses these agencies as a lever in talks with researchers to get them to understand and follow rules. She said the patchwork of institutional, academic and statewide regulations can be messy, so there’s a hope that the feds will act consistently, “because they really are the heavy in these conversations.”

But, she added, “Then they aren't predictable, and you're like, ‘Wow, OK. So they have these enforcement mechanisms and they're not using them. Or they're using them selectively.’”

The Office for Human Research Protections never took action in the Zhang case, which isn’t surprising for two reasons. One, they weren’t informed by the FDA or UCSD of his violations. Two, the agency has drastically cut down on enforcement over the past decade.

For example, it charged institutions with investigating misconduct allegations 94 times in 2002. In 2015, it did that three times. For the same period, the agency went from issuing 146 “determination letters” – an important tool for communicating findings of misconduct – to issuing five.

It’s not due to a lack of funding or a drop in complaints. In fact, institutional misconduct reports sent to the office jumped 400 percent from 2002 to 2014.

Carome said his former agency’s current leadership is “less interested in issuing harsh findings and embarrassing institutions.”

The problem with that, he said, is enforcement actions are “one of the more important tools the office has to change behavior.”

The Office of Research Integrity , another federal agency that oversees research misconduct investigations, has also been criticized for slowing its enforcement. It recently went nearly 10 months without issuing a single finding of research misconduct, though the agency has since stepped up its actions.

One medical ethicist quoted in an industry publication in 2017 called the lack of oversight by the Office of Research Integrity and the Office for Human Research Protections “nothing short of appalling.”

Even if oversight agencies were operating at full speed, a lack of transparency and data sharing would still be major flaws in safeguarding patients that could rip the roof apart.

Compliance data at the Office for Human Research Protections is kept in-house and offline, and getting at it requires a public records request, weeks to months of wait time and then skilled data analysis. The California Medical Board publishes doctor information online , but it’s more concerned with things like medical malpractice judgments, physician substance abuse and negligence in the course of routine health care than monitoring human research and clinical trials. Its database isn’t designed to incorporate audit findings, FDA warning letters or federal databases.

Academic investigations – at least in California – are kept far from Google’s reach, and typically require a public records request and the knowledge they exist. The same goes for institutional review board investigations, reviews and audits.

And none of these systems communicate with each other in any meaningful way.

Carome added one more problem plaguing the field: “Much noncompliance goes undetected or unnoticed.”

Zhang’s audit likely would have gone unnoticed if inewsource weren’t digging into the risks associated with human research, yet Springs said this may prove an opportunity for UCSD.

“When these cases emerge in the press, or people come to hear about them in some way, it highlights our failures – and that should happen,” she said.

But even then, Springs said, it doesn’t always “turn into constructive discussion and dialogue around how we can fix it.”

Audits like Zhang’s are often unintelligible to the community, to patients enrolled and even to academics, even though they are the people who should be providing feedback and criticism, she said.

“These are opportunities where we can actually promote transparency,” she said, “and say, ‘Hey, this is what happened. This is how we approached it,’ and model effective dialogue with communities on how we can work better on this.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story cited a 2017 industry publication that said the Office of Research Integrity had gone a year without making a research misconduct finding. Since the story published, the office has clarified that it went nine months and 21 days without a finding of research misconduct between 2016 and 2017.

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Japanese hospital uncovers flood of research ethics violations

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A brain and heart hospital and research centre in Japan has found 158 cases of studies being done in violation of ethics standards since 2013.

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Scientific Misconduct and Research Integrity

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• David B. Resnik J.D., Ph.D., NIEHS/NIH 3  

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Ethical integrity is a vital part of good scientific practice and publicly accountable research. This entry presents an overview of research ethics, examining its foundations, principles, common ethical dilemmas, misconduct policies and cases, and international ethics standards.

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Research: We Should Speak Up About Ethical Violations More Often

• Joseph Grenny

Those who are vocal about little infractions are six times more likely to be vocal about the big ones.

Whistle-blowing reveals not just acute misdeeds, but chronic and longstanding patterns of misconduct. For example, Edward Snowden’s bombshell release of more than 200,000 documents revealed questionable government surveillance programs that existed for years. Miami Dolphins player Jonathan Martin withdrew from play, alleging more than a year of emotional abuse from teammate Richie Incognito. These high-profile cases are just a few examples of what happens in organizations large and small every day.

• Joseph Grenny is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Crucial Conversations . He is also the cofounder of Crucial Learning , a learning company that offers courses in the areas of communication, performance, and leadership.

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Annual Review of Ethics Case Studies

What are research ethics cases.

For additional information, please visit Resources for Research Ethics Education

Research Ethics Cases are a tool for discussing scientific integrity. Cases are designed to confront the readers with a specific problem that does not lend itself to easy answers. By providing a focus for discussion, cases help staff involved in research to define or refine their own standards, to appreciate alternative approaches to identifying and resolving ethical problems, and to develop skills for dealing with hard problems on their own.

Research Ethics Cases for Use by the NIH Community

• Theme 23 – Authorship, Collaborations, and Mentoring (2023)
• Theme 22 – Use of Human Biospecimens and Informed Consent (2022)
• Theme 21 – Science Under Pressure (2021)
• Theme 20 – Data, Project and Lab Management, and Communication (2020)
• Theme 19 – Civility, Harassment and Inappropriate Conduct (2019)
• Theme 18 – Implicit and Explicit Biases in the Research Setting (2018)
• Theme 17 – Socially Responsible Science (2017)
• Theme 16 – Research Reproducibility (2016)
• Theme 15 – Authorship and Collaborative Science (2015)
• Theme 14 – Differentiating Between Honest Discourse and Research Misconduct and Introduction to Enhancing Reproducibility (2014)
• Theme 13 – Data Management, Whistleblowers, and Nepotism (2013)
• Theme 12 – Mentoring (2012)
• Theme 11 – Authorship (2011)
• Theme 10 – Science and Social Responsibility, continued (2010)
• Theme 9 – Science and Social Responsibility - Dual Use Research (2009)
• Theme 8 – Borrowing - Is It Plagiarism? (2008)
• Theme 7 – Data Management and Scientific Misconduct (2007)
• Theme 6 – Ethical Ambiguities (2006)
• Theme 5 – Data Management (2005)
• Theme 4 – Collaborative Science (2004)
• Theme 3 – Mentoring (2003)
• Theme 2 – Authorship (2002)
• Theme 1 – Scientific Misconduct (2001)

For Facilitators Leading Case Discussion

For the sake of time and clarity of purpose, it is essential that one individual have responsibility for leading the group discussion. As a minimum, this responsibility should include:

• Reading the case aloud.
• Defining, and re-defining as needed, the questions to be answered.
• Encouraging discussion that is “on topic”.
• Discouraging discussion that is “off topic”.
• Keeping the pace of discussion appropriate to the time available.
• Eliciting contributions from all members of the discussion group.
• Summarizing both majority and minority opinions at the end of the discussion.

How Should Cases be Analyzed?

Many of the skills necessary to analyze case studies can become tools for responding to real world problems. Cases, like the real world, contain uncertainties and ambiguities. Readers are encouraged to identify key issues, make assumptions as needed, and articulate options for resolution. In addition to the specific questions accompanying each case, readers should consider the following questions:

• Who are the affected parties (individuals, institutions, a field, society) in this situation?
• What interest(s) (material, financial, ethical, other) does each party have in the situation? Which interests are in conflict?
• Were the actions taken by each of the affected parties acceptable (ethical, legal, moral, or common sense)? If not, are there circumstances under which those actions would have been acceptable? Who should impose what sanction(s)?
• What other courses of action are open to each of the affected parties? What is the likely outcome of each course of action?
• For each party involved, what course of action would you take, and why?
• What actions could have been taken to avoid the conflict?

Is There a Right Answer?

Acceptable solutions.

Most problems will have several acceptable solutions or answers, but it will not always be the case that a perfect solution can be found. At times, even the best solution will still have some unsatisfactory consequences.

Unacceptable Solutions

While more than one acceptable solution may be possible, not all solutions are acceptable. For example, obvious violations of specific rules and regulations or of generally accepted standards of conduct would typically be unacceptable. However, it is also plausible that blind adherence to accepted rules or standards would sometimes be an unacceptable course of action.

Ethical Decision-Making

It should be noted that ethical decision-making is a process rather than a specific correct answer. In this sense, unethical behavior is defined by a failure to engage in the process of ethical decision-making. It is always unacceptable to have made no reasonable attempt to define a consistent and defensible basis for conduct.

This page was last updated on Friday, July 7, 2023

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• Animal subjects policies and guidelines
• Overviews of many famous examples:
• As part of an overview of the evolution of human subjects protection from the University of Waterloo Office of Research Ethics Resource page
• University of New Hampshire overview
• Behavioral research examples
• Vidich & Besman's study of a small rural community (1958):  Small town in mass society:  Class, power and religion in a rural community
• Stanley Milgram's studies of obedience (1966; wikipedia )
• Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment (1971) ( website ; Stanford University News article )
• Humphrey's Tearoom trade:  Impersonal sex in public places (1970; wikipedia )
• Foulks' work on alcoholism in Barrow Alaska (1979)
• Biomedical research examples:
• Tuskegee syphilis study (wikipedia) , ASPH curriculum Module 2 covering Tuskegee history, and another link from Michigan State University
• Ellen Roche, a medical experiment participant ( NEJM article and others: article1 ; article2 )
• Jesse Gelsinger ( wikipedia )
• Jewish chronic disease hospital cancer experiments without informed consent
• Nazi war crimes ( wikipedia page on Nazi human experimentation )
• Willowbrook State School for mentally retarded and its medical studies ( wikipedia )
• Recent examples
• Indian tribes successfully restrict research on their DNA
• Fake TV game show for a French documentary

Vidich, Arthur J., and Joseph Bensman. Small town in mass society: Class, power, and religion in a rural community . University of Illinois Press, 1968.

O’Toole, Kathleen. "The Stanford Prison Experiment: Still powerful after all these years." Stanford University News Service 8 (1997): 1797.

Steinbrook, Robert. "Protecting research subjects—the crisis at Johns Hopkins." N Engl J Med 346.9 (2002): 716-20.

This website last updated on: April 26, 2018

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Case Studies

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2024 Application for Graduate Fellows

Graduate Fellowships

2024 call for applications, the kavli center for ethics, science, and the public invites applications for its graduate fellowship program..

Discoveries in science and technology are moving quickly from basic research to real-world applications, sometimes with societal-scale impact, and scientists are increasingly encountering challenges that fall outside their expertise. We need a new kind of training that prepares scientists to confront the current and future ethical challenges of their fields, and that creates social scientists, philosophers, journalists, and policymakers who are able to work with scientists and diverse communities to ensure that the applications of scientific discoveries protect and advance fundamental human interests. The Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public aims to build a transdisciplinary community of research and learning that breaks down barriers between disciplines and across academia and society, to work together to envision the futures we want our scientific advances to create. 

The center is launching applications for its next cohort of fellows. We’re looking for graduate students in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and professional schools who are interested in exploring ethical challenges, advancing solutions, and identifying ways of involving impacted communities and the public in science and technology. Successful applicants will be offered a fellowship of 16 months (3 semesters) with modest funding available to work and study in the center and be a part of a new kind of community.  

About the Center

The UC Berkeley Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public comprises three elements: a “hub,” representing the core activities of the center, where all affiliates come together to address fundamental ethical questions across disciplinary boundaries; “spokes” linking these activities to specific scientific disciplines; and an “axle” connecting the center with the larger society it sits within. Current spoke sciences focus on genome editing, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. These areas have enormous potential to benefit humanity but also raise questions of practical and existential ethical significance and may affect distinct communities differently. Bringing these three scientific fields together under one center enables the identification of shared challenges and the translation of solutions and lessons learned from one to another. Read more about the Kavli Center here .

The Kavli Center collaborates with many departments and institutes on campus to provide fellows with access to leading researchers and scholars in their fields. Read more about our structure and core faculty here .

Eligibility

Applicants are eligible for the fellowship if they are graduate students (master’s or PhD) who meet the following conditions:

Enrollment in a UC Berkeley graduate degree program in either 

A. a science or technical degree program 1 relevant to one of the three scientific spokes 2 : Artificial Intelligence, Genome Editing, or Neuroscience.

B. a humanities or social science discipline, or a professional school, in fields including (but not limited to) Philosophy, Social Science, Economics, Sociology, Ethics, Public Health, Public Policy, Journalism, Business, or Law.

Completion of the following degree requirements:

A. Completion of the first-year course requirements in the candidate’s home department (for those in the sciences and professional schools) and selection of a primary adviser/PI (for those in the sciences).

B. Advancement to candidacy (for those in the humanities and social sciences).

1 Examples of qualifying programs include (but are not limited to) Molecular and Cell Biology Graduate Program, Bioengineering Graduate Program, Neuroscience Graduate Program, or Data Sciences Graduate Program.

2 Candidates need not be conducting dissertation research directly in AI, Genome Editing, or Neuroscience, though applicants who are doing so may be preferred.  

Overarching Goals of the Program

With the Fellowship Program, the Kavli Center aims to:

Remove disciplinary silos.

Advance our understanding of ethical challenges in innovative science, and advance how they can be addressed across different disciplines and diverse publics.

Strengthen the ability of scientists to recognize and respond to ethical challenges.

Strengthen the ability of scholars to communicate and collaborate with scientists and other experts.

Strengthen the ability of scholars and scientists to recognize the value of engaging publics, stakeholders, and communities in the questions our scientific advances raise.

Support reflection on the role and responsibilities of scientists and experts.

Program Structure

The program is designed to supplement student’s graduate programs and existing training in their primary field.  We hope to see fellows cross the boundaries of typically siloed disciplines and explore public, stakeholder, or community perspectives in defining ethical applications of science and technology. To this end, the program is structured in three-parts.

Learning & Exploration : Fellows will expand their training outside their primary discipline through weekly colloquia, workshops, and special access to courses and other learning opportunities. The emphasis during this initial stage is to explore new concepts and skills, and gain a common foundational understanding of different dimensions of ethical challenges and opportunities presented by advancements in science, with an emphasis on our three spoke sciences. Fellows will bring their distinct areas of expertise to teach each other and foster collective growth.

Ideation : During this second phase, fellows will continue their exploration of different fields and discussion of ethical dilemmas born from scientific advancements, but will begin to define a small project that will be executed during the third phase. This project will build on what they’ve explored in the first semester. We ask that fellows stretch their boundaries during this project beyond their primary thesis work. Fellows will pitch their project ideas to their colleagues and to some of our core faculty and researchers for feedback. The center aims to support fellows in a variety of different project paths. Such a project may look like a small community or public engagement that engages around hopes, fears, or ethical questions about a scientific advancement. It may look like a chapter in a thesis, a public-facing piece about the ethical, legal, or social implications of science, or organizing a convening around a particular issue. Where center-wide projects align with the fellow’s interests, a fellowship project may look like participation in a larger research or engagement effort. Lastly, projects could be individual or collaborative with other fellows. 

Execution : Following project approval from the Executive Director, fellows will shift to working on their projects. Weekly meetings will still provide ongoing training, but will also include space for sharing works in progress and getting feedback. The center will help connect fellows with experts or resources that can provide additional insights. 

We aspire to create a strong cohort of scientists and scholars who will continue to interact during their professional careers.  This cohort model has been successful in building other novel fields, through forming strong support and collaboration among current students, postdocs, and program alumni who have moved on to other positions in academia, industry, NGOs, foundations and government. By regularly convening program alumni and fostering connections, we will create a community that goes beyond UC Berkeley to effect positive change in the real world.

Program Elements

A weekly Colloquium (Mondays 2pm–4pm) represents the core programming for the Kavli Center Fellows. Weeks alternate between formats to bring training, discussion, and work-in-progress support to the fellows. 

Working groups or journal clubs formed around the interests of the fellows.

Independent time within the center. The center acts as a hub to connect fellows to other experts and to provide support in project development.

Community building and support for each person’s individual development.

Availability of special opportunities (see below). 

Examples of Special Opportunities

The Kavli Center develops pilot projects, new courses, workshops, events, or research and engagement opportunities that are open to the fellows. Below are upcoming opportunities and previous examples.

Special access to a new spring 2025 course taught by the Kavli Center’s Co-Director, Jodi Halpern: “Skillful Ethical Reasoning for Innovation and Health Leadership." This course is case-based yet takes an unusually systematic approach. Each week introduces one of four major ethical theories, showing how the theories relate to each other using real cases in public health, germline gene editing, experimental invasive neuro-technologies, and a range of uses of AI in health.

An op-ed workshop led by historian and journalist, Elena Conis, and collaboration with a journalism graduate class to write about ethical issues in science for a public audience. Past fellows have had their work submitted to outlets such as Undark, Wired, and Scientific American.

Participation in projects from the Berkeley Ethics and Regulation Group for Innovative Technologies . One or two fellows may be selected to join the planning group and work regularly with ethics and regulation experts.

Participation in a collaborative project with the Berkeley Public Library to bring discussions about ethical questions in our three spoke areas to the Berkeley public ( past example ). 

Participation in new courses organized by the Kavli Center or its affiliates: for example, the center created two new courses that were offered in 2023 and 2024 .

The center often hosts diplomats or policy experts or has access to invitation-only events with high-level experts and officials. When fellows’ expertise aligns, we regularly nominate or include them in such events.

Expectations

Regularly attend and contribute to program activities which include presenting journal articles for discussion, contributing to or leading group discussions, helping to organize seminars, and exchanging feedback on work in progress. 

Attend project or skill development workshops and other center events.

Contribute to growing the Kavli Center community. 

Produce a fellowship project output. As described above, this may be through any number of activities and can include working independently or collaboratively on a toolkit, a white paper, a public/stakeholder/community engagement on a specific topic, a policy or regulatory proposal, a thesis chapter on an ethical dilemma in a science spoke, an op-ed, or any number of meaningful efforts that align with the goals of the center.

Present your work to the broader Kavli Center community.

Participate in alumni activities, returning periodically for cohort retreats and networking.

Fellows will have access to rotating desk space and meeting rooms in 621 Sutardja Dai Hall.

Start Date and Fellowship Duration

Graduate Fellowships begin at the start of the fall 2024 semester. The first meeting and orientation will be scheduled for the second week of September. Participation is year-round, and will run until the end of Fall 2025 semester (16 months).

The Kavli Center provides an award of up to $10,000 to support fellows' participation in the program. This award may be put toward stipend (including summer stipend), tuition, or fees. The mechanisms for administering the award may vary depending on the student’s department (past disbursements have been to PIs or via departmentally distributed awards). 

How to Apply

Complete the online application: https://form.jotform.com/241337710113141

As part of the application, you will be asked to include:

An Interest Statement : Up to 750 words submitted as a form attachment (see the instructions below). 

A Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement : up to 250 words via a form field describing your personal background and contributions to diversity, equity, and valuing inclusion of a variety of perspectives and lived experiences. Applicants who address these as part of their interest statement may simply state so in the form field.

A copy of your curriculum vitae or resume submitted as a form attachment.

A s tatement of support from your thesis supervisor or mentor submitted via a separate form (see the instructions below).

Instructions for the Interest Statement

Interest Statements should include the following:

Describe the relevance of the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public Fellowship to your academic or professional development . Why are you interested in this program? How will the program help you achieve your career goals or fill a gap missing in your current training and why? 

Describe your interest areas. What is the topic of your current thesis work and what interest areas and key learning questions do you envision pursuing in the Kavli Center if awarded the fellowship? While ideas for fellowship projects and outputs will be developed during the fellowship program, what projects or work products might you imagine emerging from your time in the center? Is there a question you wish to pursue or a particular area of interest that stretches beyond your immediate disciplinary training? Not all successful applicants will have a pre-defined project and may instead hope to use the fellowship to explore how they might integrate some of the concepts and values of the center into their own research or practice. In either case, interest statements should indicate how you hope to use your time in the fellowship program, if selected.

Statements should be no more than 750 words, single-spaced, in Times New Roman 12 point font and include your full name at the top.

Instructions for the Statement of Support

If you have a PI or academic advisor who supervises your thesis work, we ask that they fill out a form to indicate their approval of your participation in the fellowship program and to provide a 1-paragraph statement of support. This paragraph should help support why you would make a good Ethics, Science, and the Public Graduate Fellow. For those without a thesis supervisor, please have a mentor or faculty member who can speak to your qualifications fill out the statement of support.

Tip: It may help to provide your recommender with some bullet points highlighting why you want to be involved in this program and what makes you an excellent candidate .

Statements of support should be submitted through the following form and are also due Monday, July 1, 2024 by 11:59pm PT : https://airtable.com/app98b01wuELiQ4yr/pagO4AyZBYEcfyRNu/form

Application Deadline

The Graduate Fellowship application is due Monday, July 1, 2024 by 11:59pm PT . This includes the statement of support submitted by your supervisor or mentor.

Anticipated Timeline

We anticipate notifying applicants of our decision by early August, 2024 .

Start of the fellowship: Second week of September, 2024 . Exact date and time of the first meeting will be scheduled around the incoming cohort’s schedule.

Please direct any questions to [email protected]

NOTE :  We do not expect to fund a new cohort of Postdoctoral Fellows this year. We will, however, post a page for potential postdocs who may be self-funded (via grants) to contact us about potential positions, as well as a page for potential visiting students, postdocs, or faculty scholars.  Please check back at the Fellowships page soon.

Quick Info.

Application Deadline : Monday, July 1, 2024 by 11:59pm PT.

Eligibility : Current UC Berkeley graduate students (master’s or PhD) who meet the described conditions.

Duration & Award : Sept. 2024 – Dec. 2025 (16 months) & up to $10,000

Application Instructions

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