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Hastings Center News

Meet the 2025-26 Sadler Scholars and CERA Fellows

Published Posted in Bioethics, Genomics

The Hastings Center for Bioethics announces the 2025-26 Sadler Scholars, advanced doctoral students and early-career bioethics researchers selected through a competitive application process. The Sadler Scholars initiative provides mentoring, workshops, opportunities for feedback on works in progress, and other activities that support professional development and community building. All activities are remote.

Two of the new Sadler Scholars are also CERA Fellows — their research focuses on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of human genomics. The Hastings Center is delighted to collaborate with the Center for ELSI Research and Analysis (CERA) to offer additional professional opportunities to Sadler Scholars who are ELSI researchers.

The new Sadler Scholars-CERA Fellows are:

  • Blessing Adewuyi (top, left), a doctoral candidate in religion at the University of Georgia
  • Victor Ekuta (top, right), a resident in neurology at Morehouse School of Medicine

Sadler Scholars returning for a special opportunity for project-focused mentorship are:

  • Asmita Aasaavari (bottom, center), a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Connecticut
  • Calvin Bradley, Jr. (bottom, left), Director of Education in the Department of Patient Counseling at Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Donald Carter (bottom, right), Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Professionalism at Mercer University School of Medicine
  • Kimberlyn Ellis (top, center), a doctoral candidate in human genetics at the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute and the inaugural CERA Fellow in 2024-25.

Erik Parens, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, has joined the Sadler Scholars’ roster of mentors, with special responsibility for mentoring the CERA Fellows. 

The Sadler Scholars program was launched in 2021 by senior research scholar Nancy Berlinger. “What began as a pandemic pivot at a time when our residential visiting scholar program was suspended has becoming a thriving, mutually supportive community of next-generation bioethics researchers and committed mentors,” she said.

Stipends for new Sadler Scholars are provided by The Hastings Center through the Blair and Georgia Sadler Fund for Socially Just Health Policy. The Sadler Fund also supports expert advisors to this initiative, who serve as mentors.

For more information about the new Sadler Scholars, visit the program webpage.