People
Ashley Feinsinger, PhD
Dr. Ashley Feinsinger is an Assistant Professor and the Frances O’Malley Endowed Chair in Neuroscience History in the Department of Neurosurgery in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and affiliated faculty in the Center for Social Medicine and the Brain Research Institute. She received her PhD and MA in philosophy from UCLA, specializing in philosophy of language. Currently, her research examines the relevance of various philosophical frameworks for ethical neuroscience research, with a focus on participant engagement in basic research and neural device development. This work can be found in Neuron, Nature Human Behavior, Hastings Center Report, AJOB Neuroscience, Neurosurgery, Journal of Medical Ethics, and Neuroethics.
She is also the Ethics Theme Chair for medical education at DGSOM and Co-Director the UCLA-CDU Dana Center for Neuroscience and Society, which you can learn about here.
Principal Investigator
Lilyana Levy, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Lilyana is a postdoctoral scholar in the department of Neurosurgery at UCLA. She received her PhD in Philosophy from Emory University in 2021, her MA in Philosophy from Emory University in 2016, and her B.A. in Philosophy from Vassar College in 2011. Her dissertation, “Contested Illness and Embodied Knowing: On Medical Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice” foregrounds patient perspectives on medical error, diagnostic delay and illness dismissal to give an account of medical gaslighting as a systemic and pervasive form of epistemic injustice. As a postdoc, her work focuses on the ethics of brain computer interfaces (BCI), specifically visual cortical prostheses (VCP). Outside of the lab, Lilyana can be found hiking on the many wonderful trails in Southern California, doting on her two cats, or experimenting in the kitchen.
Colleen Hanson, MA
Colleen is a philosophy PhD student at University of California, Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the metaphysics of pregnancy, and she has broader interests in bioethics and feminist philosophy. In the lab, she works on qualitative projects in Neuroethics. Before heading to UCLA, she received her BA in philosophy with an interdisciplinary emphasis in bioethics from University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. While there, she interned as a bioethicist at Tacoma General Hospital. She also currently works on the medical ethics curriculum, developing sessions for first and second year medical students.
Graduate Student
Past Members
Ally Peabody Smith, PhD, former post doc, current position: Assistant Professor, Tenure Track, Lehigh University College of Health
Michelle Pham, PhD, former post doc, current position: Assistant Professor, Tenure Track, in the Michigan State University Center for Bioethics and Social Justice
Lauren Herzog, MD, formed medical student, current position: Neurology Residency, University of Pennsylvania
Current Collaborators
Jen Collinger, University of Pittsburgh
Jen French, Neurotech Network
Nanthia Suthana, Duke University
Ueli Rutishauser, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, California Institute of Technology
Agatha Lenartowicz, UCLA
Daniel Aharoni, UCLA
Ausaf Bari, UCLA
Nader Pouratian, UT Southwestern
Helena Hansen, UCLA
Denese Shervington, CDU
Amy Woods, CDU
Gina Poe, UCLA
Felix Schweizer, UCLA
Marco Iacoboni, UCLA
Eugene Caruso, UCLA Anderson School of Management