Alta Charo

Alta Charo is the Knowles Professor Emerita of Law & Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, where for over 30 years she has taught classes on biotechnology policy, food and drug law, public health law and bioethics. Alta served as a David A. Hamburg Inaugural Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, working in its global biosecurity program. She is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and the National Academy of Medicine. She was a member of Pres. Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission, worked as a policy analyst at the congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the US Agency for International Development, and served as a senior policy advisor in the Office of the Commissioner at the FDA, focusing on regulatory approaches to emerging technologies. At the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine she co-chaired the committees on guidelines for embryonic stem cell research (2005-2010) and governance of human genome editing (2015-2017), co-founded the forum on regenerative medicine, served on its committee on science technology and law, and now co-chairs its standing committee on “emerging science, technology and innovation.” At present, she is also a member of the World Health Organization’s expert advisory committee on global governance of genome editing, and a member of the organizing committee for the upcoming 2022 US-UK “third international summit on genome editing.”