Wenner Named to Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics

The Greenwall Foundation has named Carnegie Mellon University's Danielle Wenner among its Faculty Scholars for 2019-2022. Wenner, assistant professor of philosophy in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences , will complete a project titled "The Basic Structure Model of Research Stakeholder Obligations." The three-year, $200,000 award will enable Wenner to continue to develop a framework for thinking about research ethics that she first proposed in a 2018 paper in the Hastings Center Report and continued working on during a Caroline Miles Visiting Scholarship at the Ethox Centre at Oxford University during spring 2019. "Professor Wenner is one of the rising stars in bioethics and research ethics whose work blends theoretical rigor with practical, applied relevance," said David Danks, head of the Department of Philosophy. "This award is a well-deserved recognition of her scholarly leadership." Wenner's project aims to develop a justice-based approach to health research priority-setting and to determine appropriate regulatory or policy mechanisms for the implementation of that approach. She also is working to determine the implications of that approach for justice in the distribution of health advances and the knowledge gained from health research. In addition, she will investigate the extent to which existing intellectual property regimes can accommodate these insights and explore alternative approaches to intellectual property in health advances that might better promote justice.