Passed my doctoral dissertation defense!

I am pleased to announce that I was able to successfully defend my dissertation and complete my Ph.D. The dissertation, “Modulating Agency: the Moral and Aesthetic Import of Deep–Brain Stimulation,” is a collection of three papers assessing how deep–brain stimulation (DBS) devices impact their users’ experiences of and ability to exercise agency. In it, I argue that current views on DBS’s influence on user authenticity, identity, and/or autonomy are limited insofar as they characterize DBS as an external threat or aide to these features of self-hood. Thanks to everyone who helped me along the way: my dissertation committee (Drs. Sara Goering, Andrea Woody, Carina Fourie, and Gina Campelia), my excellent colleagues in the Center for Neurotechnology, my supportive friends & family, and most of all…my partner Sandra.

Stay tuned for everything that comes next!

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Teaching neuroethics at MIT’s MOSTEC

Every year, MIT’s Office of Engineering Outreach Programs runs a six-month online course for rising high school seniors from underrepresented backgrounds: the MIT Online Science, Technology, and Engineering Community (or MOSTEC) program. To culminate the course, the students meet up at MIT for an intense week of face-to-face courses. This year, I had the privilege of teaching an neuroethics for MOSTEC. This is the first time they’ve brought in someone to teach neuroethics, and so it was a (successful) experiment for both of us. The students were excited to learn what neurotechnologies exist, talk through difficult medical ethics cases, and apply what they learned to their own capstone projects.

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Mentee Hannah Martens completes Summer REU program

Hannah Martens, my long-term mentee, just completed the Center for Neurotechnology’s Research Experience for Undergraduates program. Over the course of 10-weeks, Hannah lead a research project to determine the moral (and aesthetic) implications of using Deep Brain Stimulators (DBS) to treat obesity. DBS therapy, she argued, might exacerbate the stigma, isolation, and low self-regard that often accompany obesity. As always, working with Hannah was an awesome experience—she is already a colleague, as far as I’m concerned. I can’t wait to work with her again in the future.

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