Research Ethics & Ethical, Legal & Social Issues
June 5, 2026 | Noon - 1:00 pm | Online
Reintroducing the Pitt HCD Team
Chelsea Proulx, MPH, and Will Hierholzer, Office of Multidisciplinary Innovations, University of Pittsburgh
Proulx and Hierholzer will discuss ethics and IRB tips for studies using HCD. This session is part of the Human-Centered Design (HCD) Brown Bag Lunch series that takes place virtually, generally (but not always!) on the first Friday of the month between noon and 1:00 pm.
Registration — Here you will find the full list of the HCD talks during this past year; they are recorded and available.
The series is sponsored by the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the Institute for Clinical Research Education.
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June 22 - 24, 2026 | Chapel Hill, NC, and online
7th Annual ELSI Congress
The ELSI [Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications] Congress brings together scholars who are dedicated to understanding and shaping the impact of genomic science on society, and to share research, exchange ideas, and influence the future of the field. Registration opened March 9.
Bioethics, Health Humanities, Health Policy & Clinical Ethics
June 10 - 13, 2026 | Tinkham Veale University Center on the campus of Case Western Reserve University (CWRU)
Building Bridges for Purposeful Global Healing: Interrelation and Mutuality in Clinical Ethics and Consultation — 20th International Conference on Clinical Ethics and Consultation (ICCEC)
The 2026 ICCEC celebrates the wide variety of professional, disciplinary, cultural and practice backgrounds of those who engage in clinical ethics and ethics consultation. It serves as a global forum for collaborative learning, sharing, bridging divides, and promoting healing that recognizes the fact of the interrelatedness and mutual dependence of people and clinical ethics profesionals.
The June 10th all day Nursing Practice and Clinical Ethics preconference features plenary speakers Shika Kalevor, MBE, MSN, RN (Clinical Ethicist, Children’s Minnesota) and Barbara Daly, PhD, RN, FAAN (Professor Emerita, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University) as well as a variety of concurrent sessions.
The June 10th afternoon Building an Ethics Program pre-conference will function more as a workshop, led by Olubukunola (O. Mary) Dwyer, JD, MA, HEC-C, System Director, Clinical Ethics, OhioHealth.
The June 12th gala (6:00-10:00 pm), to be held at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, will feature a cocktail reception, formal dinner, and live entertainment by Cleveland's own poly-genre ensemble Opus 216, along with private access to some museum exhibits and a premier planetarium show.
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June 24, 2026 |8:00 - 9:00 am | Parkvale Building, Suite 300, Room 305, and online via Teams
Palliative Care: Working in the Gray
Theresa Brown, RN, PhD, Author of Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient; The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives; and Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between
Palliative care offers relief, an underrated treatment when curative options are no longer available to patients or will do more harm than good. The problem is, “curative options,” “harm,” and “good” are often in the eye of the beholder, or the physician, when patients with serious illness are unable to get significantly better, but their lives and sometimes function can be maintained with health care interventions. This talk will explore the gray areas of palliative care using clinical examples from the speaker’s work as an oncology and hospice nurse, and research for her next book, 4 Nurses. A key theme will be the role of hope in the care of serious illness. What counts as hope when a patient is dying? Is false hope better than no hope at all, or is that a false dichotomy?
Join via Teams (Passcode: PH75Ps9u)
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Bioethics and Department of Medicine Section on Palliative Care and Medical Ethics
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June 25, 2026 | 1:00 - 2:30 pm | Online
Frontier Issues in Organ Transplantation: New Approaches to Saving Lives & Securing Trust
Organ transplantation is at a crossroads. Too many people die for lack of an organ. Confidence in the U.S. transplant system has been shaken. Three experts will debate what comes next. Will new technologies save lives — perfusion options, xenotransplantation, and prolonged organ cryopreservation? Will reorganizing the transplant system and modernizing the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) solidify public trust? This webinar will explore the future of organ transplantation.
Registration
Sponsored by by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center for Advanced Technologies for the Preservation of Biological Systems (ATP-Bio) (grant no. EEC 1941543)
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November 12 - 14, 2026 | In-person in the Baron-Forness Library at PennWest University in Edinboro, PA
2nd Biennial Conference on Global Bioethics
Sponsored by Duquesne University’s Center for Global Health Ethics and PennWest University’s James F. Drane Bioethics Institute
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March 4 - 7, 2027 | In-person at Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown (600 Commonwealth Place, Pittsburgh, PA, 15222)
36th Annual Conference of the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics
Sponsored by Pitt Research, this virtual exhibition demonstrates Pitt’s creativity and leadership in public communication of science and technology. With a Pitt Seed grant and science & technology studies scholar Hannah Starr Rogers, curator and science communication expert Elizabeth Pitts (Department of English) created the exhibit of ten artists/artist groups to inquire: What do we want from biotechnologies? Who is biotechnology for? Who decides?
In 2020, Pitt’s Center for Bioethics & Health Law mounted a virtual exhibition of work by Norman Klenicki. A self-taught artist and son of Auschwitz survivors, Klenicki uses his canvases to memorialize Holocaust victims and to channel the energy and emotions he experiences as a person with bipolar disorder. The exhibition is employed in history and Jewish studies courses, as well as the health humanities. With City of Asylum, the Center hosted events exploring connections between music and mental health, and between Klenicki’s visual art and the work of jazz musicians Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus. Historian and exhibit curator Bridget Keown (Gender, Sexuality , and Women’s Studies Program) leads a virtual gallery tour.
