Principal Investigators: Mildred Cho, Stanford University, and Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Columbia University

Co-Investigator: Josephine Johnston and Nancy Berlinger, The Hastings Center

Funder: National Human Genome Research Institute

Start date: September 2024

The Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Columbia Division of Ethics are leading a five-year expansion of their virtual center for research on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of human genomics, in collaboration with The Hastings Center and Case Western Reserve University, along with multiple partner organizations. The Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA) is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute.

A centerpiece of the CERA is the ELSIhub.org online knowledge portal, which facilitates the use of ELSI research findings. The site will be outfitted with new tools to enable global, online discussions between scholars in ethics, social science, public health, and law and other stakeholders, during this phase of the project. The team will also be testing the responsible use of large language models for research synthesis that will aid human curators in the production of summarized ELSI research for a wide variety of audiences and use cases.

In this second phase, CERA is developing programming to engage new audiences and increase uptake of ELSI research. This engagement includes partnering with The Hastings Center to support career development for students who are interested in ethical, legal, and social implications of genomics research. A major component of this partnership is the selection each year of a CERA Fellow from among The Hastings Center Sadler Scholars. The Hastings Center-CERA partnership will also enable inclusion of enriched ELSI content for The Hastings Center’s annual Summer Bioethics Program.