Jodi Halpern

Jodi Halpern MD, PhD, Chancellor's Chair and Professor of Bioethics at University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), is an international leader on empathy in healthcare, emotionally resilient leadership and the ethics of innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), gene editing, and neurotechnology. She was awarded the Guggenheim 2022 award in Medicine and Health for her work on how to create emotional resilience in individuals as well as collectively.

Dr. Halpern's groundbreaking work, "From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice" catalyzed a wave of change in medicine. Her forthcoming book, “Remaking the Self in the Wake of Illness" (expected in 2025), introduces a new approach to emotional resilience. Additionally, Dr. Halpern, who is a trained psychiatrist, examines the impact of AI in mental health in her latest project, "Engineering Empathy."

Dr. Halpern co-founded and co-directs the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public and the Berkeley Group on the Ethics and Regulation of Innovative Technologies. She advises NGOs, companies, and governments and speaks in settings ranging from the Davos World Economic Forum to NPR to CBS News.

A graduate of Yale University with an MD and a PhD in philosophy, Halpern received the Porter Prize for Outstanding Dissertation across all disciplines. She completed her medical internship and psychiatry residency at UCLA, followed by a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Fellowship in Health Services. As a faculty member, she has received highly competitive fellowships from the Rockefeller Center for Human Values at Princeton University, the Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program, the Townsend Humanities Center, and the University of California Women’s Leadership Initiative, as well as Endowed Lectureships from many leading universities, including Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, The Aspen Institute and The Royal College of Medicine. Dr. Halpern has published over 70 influential scholarly articles and received awards for mentorship and leadership as well as the honor of being named a Chancellor’s Chair Professor at the UC Berkeley.