Julia Kolak works at the intersection of the philosophy of medicine and bioethics, with a focus on the conceptual frameworks underlying disease identification and classification, and their impact on medical decision-making. She is currently engaged in research that examines these themes in the normative underpinnings of psychiatric nosology, providing a philosophical and historical analysis of the adoption of operational definitions of mental disorders in the DSM. In connection with this work, she is interested in the boundary between health and disease more broadly, and the relationship between disease concepts, dysfunction, and clinical interventions.

Her bioethics research spans multiple areas, including health care ethics consultation (HCEC) methodology and standardization, experimental bioethics, research ethics, placebos, and psychedelic medicine. In connection with her work in reproductive ethics, she currently serves as co-chair of the Reproductive Ethics Affinity Group of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities (ASBH).

Prior to joining The Hastings Center for Bioethics, Julia was a 2023-2024 visiting fellow at the Edmond & Lily Safra center for Ethics at Harvard University. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Montefiore Einstein Center for Bioethics where she worked on the ethics consultation service of Montefiore Medical Center performing bedside mediation.

Julia has taught widely in various master’s programs, including the Montefiore Einstein Bioethics Master’s program, and Mount Sinai’s Master of Science in Bioethics and Clinical Research programs. While serving as a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Epidemiology in Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she received the Leo M. Davidoff Society Award in recognition of her contributions to undergraduate medical education.

She earned her PhD in philosophy from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, which was supported by fellowships from The Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where she was a former senior clinical ethics fellow.