Insoo Hyun

Insoo Hyun, PhD, is Director at the Center for Life Sciences and Public Learning at the Boston Museum of Science. He is also the Director of Research Ethics and a faculty member of the Center for Bioethics and senior lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As a Fulbright Scholar and Hastings Center Fellow, Dr. Hyun’s interests include ethical and policy issues in stem cell research and new biotechnologies.

Currently, Dr. Hyun is the Principal Investigator of a BRAIN Initiative-funded project exploring the ethical issues surrounding human brain organoid research, in collaboration with leading scientists at Harvard and Stanford. He is also a Co-Principal Investigator, along with colleagues at the Hastings Center, of an NIH grant identifying ways to improve the oversight of stem cell-based human-animal chimera research. Dr. Hyun has been involved for many years with the ISSCR (International Society for Stem Cell Research), for which he has helped draft all of the ISSCR’s international research guidelines and has served as their Chair of the Ethics and Public Policy Committee.

Dr. Hyun received his BA and MA in Philosophy with Honors in Ethics in Society from Stanford University and his PhD in Philosophy from Brown University. He has been interviewed frequently on National Public Radio and has served on national commissions for the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. Dr. Hyun is a regular contributor to Nature, Science, Cell Stem Cell, The Hastings Center Report, among many other journals. His book Bioethics and the Future of Stem Cell Research was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013. He was recently named one of Cleveland’s Most Interesting People of 2019.