Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBE

Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBE, is Associate Professor of Medical Ethics and Law at the University of Pennsylvania. She pursues conceptual and empirical scholarship regarding clinical research ethics and regulation, access to investigational medicines, and FDA pharmaceutical policy, especially approaches to drug development and early approval pathways for diseases with unmet treatment needs. She is founder and co-chair of the Consortium to Advance Effective Research Ethics Oversight (www.AEREO.org), a collaborative endeavor to define, measure, and improve the quality and effectiveness of institutional review boards and human research protection programs. She was a Greenwall Faculty Scholar from 2019-2022, received the inaugural Baruch A. Brody Bioethics Award in 2020, was elected a fellow of the Hastings Center in 2021, and was selected as a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine in 2022. She is a board member of Public Responsibility in Medicine & Research (PRIM&R) and board president-elect of the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics. Professor Fernandez Lynch has previously worked as an attorney in private practice, a bioethicist serving NIH’s Division of AIDS, an analyst with President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, and executive director of Harvard Law School’s bioethics and health law research program. She earned graduate degrees in law and bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.