Professor Jeff Skopek
AB (Stanford), PhD MPhil (Cantab), JD (Harvard)
Professor in Law, Deputy Director of the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences
Jeff Skopek is a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences.
His research explores the normative and conceptual foundations of health law, focusing in particular on controversies about what constitutes a harm/benefit within medical care, the health care system, and biomedical research. He is currently working on a pair of projects on the use artificial intelligence in health care, as well as a project on animal rights.
Outside of academia, he serves on the Ethics and Sustainability Board at bit.bio, a synthetic biology company that creates human cells for use in research, drug discovery and cell therapy. He previously served on Astra Zeneca's Animal Welfare Ethics Review Board and the Health and Social Care Advisory Panel for the UK government's Centre for Digital Ethics.
Before taking up his position at Cambridge, he held a three-year Academic Fellowship at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Centre for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. Prior to that, he served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Lynch of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
He holds a J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. in History (with distinction) from Stanford University. His studies were supported by Truman, Fulbright, Gates Scholarships, for which he is very grateful.