Erin Sharoni, ALM, current student in the Master of Science in Bioethics degree program, was recently named an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics at Oxford University. Her fellowship work will primarily be an extension of her MBE work focused on animal ethics, i.e., our moral obligations to other species and their moral worth and deservingness of care, the role of reflexivity in research ethics, and the concept of "flourishing for all," which highlights ethics at the intersection of humans, animals, engineering, technology, and the environment.

The fellowship will enrich her professional and academic pursuits in advancing the adoption of animal-free research systems—microphysiological systems (MPS) like organs-on-chips and in silico AI-based systems are poised to drastically improve translational outcomes in medicine. Her work in the MBE program and in a recent appointment as a researcher for the NIH program, Bridge to Artificial Intelligence, focuses on ethical issues related to these technologies. Center member Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, is a Principal Investigator of the program and Sharoni's MBE faculty advisor.

Sharoni explained how the MBE program prepared her by teaching "how to rigorously interrogate our relationships with the other beings we share our planet with, and to evaluate and articulate the empirical and normative considerations informing the technologies we build and actions we take on their behalf." She continued, "As we face the consequences of climate chaos, food system inequity, and zoonotic disease emergence, it is clear that human flourishing cannot exist in a silo; we ought to expand our sphere of moral consideration to include all beings. It appears that the only way to flourish is to flourish together."