Directors and Staff
Adrienne Asch, PhD, MS, Director
Adrienne is the Edward and Robin Milstein Professor of Bioethics at Yeshiva University and Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her work focuses on the ethical, political, psychological, and social implications of human reproduction and the family.
She has authored numerous articles and book chapters, and is the co-editor of Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights and The Double-Edged Helix: Social Implications of Genetics in a Diverse Society.
She received her doctorate in social psychology from Columbia University, was a member of the board of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the Clinton Task Force on Health Care Reform, and the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Policy Planning Group of the National Human Genome Research Institute. She is a board member of the Society of Jewish Ethics and the American Civil Liberties Union, a fellow at the Hastings Center, and a member of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law.
Dr. Asch's CV (PDF)
David Wasserman, JD, MA, Director of Research
David works on issues in genetics, disability, reproduction, and research ethics. Before joining the University in 2007, he was a research scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He has held research fellowships at Harvard and NYU, and received research support from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Science Foundation.
Among many other publications, he co-authored Disability, Difference, Discrimination with Anita Silvers and Mary Mahowald and co-edited Quality of Life and Human Difference: Genetic Testing, Health-Care, and Disability.
Staff
Dorit Barlevy is the Research and Program Assistant at the Center for Ethics. A graduate with distinction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dorit holds a B.S. in Anthropology. She recently earned an M.A. in Applied Ethics from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Linkoping University in Sweden. Dorit was an International Relations Officer for the Israeli Medical Association for three years. During the course of her employment at the IMA she worked on a variety of biomedical issues such as e-health, informed consent, orphan drugs and neglected diseases, conflicts of interest due to physician ties to the pharmaceutical industry, counterfeit drugs, patient rights and autonomy, and pharmacogenomics.
William Chin is the Research and Administrative Assistant at the Center for Ethics. He is a graduate of the City University of New York's Bernard Baruch College, William holds a B.A. in History and Political Science. He interned at the office of former New York City Councilmember and recent New York City Comptroller candidate David Yassky. William was a production assistant for www.cbsnews.com during the fall 2008 Presidential Election cycle, turning out content for the CBS News site daily. Recently, he was a development intern at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) where he took part in fund-raising activities for the museum before volunteering for NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's reelection campaign in the fall of 2009.