Introducing the 2016-2017 Petrie-Flom Student Fellows

The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome our new 2016-2017 Student Fellows. In the coming year, each fellow will pursue independent scholarly projects related to health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics under the mentorship of Center faculty and fellows. They will also be regular contributors here at Bill of Health on issues related to their research.

Seán Finan is an LLM candidate from Ireland at the Harvard Law School. He recently graduated from the LLB programme at Trinity College, Dublin, where he served as a Senior Editor of the Trinity College Law Review. His research interests include the ethical implications of emerging biotechnologies. For his Fellowship project, he intends to investigate the use of morality tests on patent applications as a means of indirect regulation of research.

Wendy Salkin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. Her primary research is in political philosophy, moral philosophy, social philosophy, and philosophy of law. She also works on questions in feminist philosophy and bioethics. She is writing a dissertation on informal political representation under the supervision of Tommie Shelby, T.M. Scanlon, Richard Moran, and Eric Beerbohm. She holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. in Philosophy and Africana Studies from New York University. For her Fellowship project, she will examine new directions in the debate over lifespan extension.

Brad Segal is currently a medical student at Harvard Medical School where he is enrolled in a dual MD/Master of Bioethics degree program. Brad received his BA and BS from UC San Diego where he double majored in Philosophy and Physiology/Neuroscience. In his first year at HMS Brad’s paper on the ethics of organ transplantation was awarded the Henry K. Beecher Prize in Medical Ethics. He has also studied the ethical implications of our evolving understanding of the brain, and has published on whether and when individual genetics and neurobiology should mitigate a criminal defendant’s moral culpability. During his Fellowship he will be studying what ‘harm’ means in the medical context.

Shailin Thomas is a second year law student in a joint MD/JD program between Harvard Law School and the New York University School of Medicine. He received a B.S. from Yale University, where he studied cognitive neuroscience — exploring the anatomy and physiology behind social phenomena. His interests lie at the intersection of clinical medicine and the legal forces that shape it. Prior to law school, Shailin worked on both the administrative and clinical sides of health care, and as a research associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is currently an affiliate of the Berkman Center and Outreach Editor for the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. A fervent proponent of privacy and freedom of expression, Shailin has also served on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut. For his Fellowship project, he will focus on a tort solution for faulty eyewitness testimony procedures.