Alta Charo Shapes Global Conversations

This year, Emerita Professor of Law and Bioethics Alta Charo played a leading role in shaping global conversations at the intersection of bioethics, biotechnology and emerging technologies. She co-authored the "Genome Editing Case Study", part of the Microsoft Office of Responsible AI white paper Learning from Other Domains to Advance AI Evaluation and Testing, and contributed to a Science article calling for a coordinated global approach to ethical oversight of human neural organoid and assembloid research. Charo also authored "If We Could Turn Back Time" in Trends in Genetics, reflecting on scientific responsibility and governance. Internationally, she participated in a joint OECD–WHO meeting in Paris on global governance of emerging technologies. Her speaking engagements included a keynote on equitable global access to gene therapy, leadership of an Asilomar panel on neural organoid ethics, and participation in a biotechnology law panel at the Federalist Society’s annual meeting. Charo was appointed to DARPA’s Biological Sciences and Technology committee, chairing a study group on autonomous biosurveillance, and was selected to serve on Fujifilm’s new Bioethics Advisory Committee.