Karen Rommelfanger is the Program Director of Emory University’s  Neuroethics Program  at the Center for Ethics and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology with a secondary appointment in the Department of Psychiatry at Emory University. Dr. Rommelfanger received her PhD in Neuroscience from Emory University, her research focused on movement disorders. Her current research explores the nature and utility of placebo using Psychogenic Movement Disorders as a therapeutic model. She is also the Neuroscience Editor-in-Residence for the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience.

     Dr. Rommelfanger has been a neuroscience researcher for over 10 years and her work has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Neuroscience; her research on Parkinson Disease has been featured in the popular media including Scientific American. She has presented her work at both international and national conferences and has worked in prestigious laboratories in the U.S. and Japan using a broad array of neurotechnologies from brain imaging and behavioral techniques to electrophysiological recording of individual brain cells.

     She regularly gives Neuroethics talks in both universities and for general audiences; her neuroethics work has been published in top peer-reviewed neuroethics journals and in Nature Reviews Neurology, and she maintains and writes for The Neuroethics Blog at Emory University. She also founded NEW (NeuroEthicsWomen) Leaders, an organization that aims to cultivate professional development and scholarly networks for women in neuroethics and is a founding member of the Atlanta Neuroethics Consortium. Dr. Rommelfanger believes that neuroethics training gives neuroscientists a creative edge and that neuroethics discussions are critical for academics and general audiences alike in order to ensure maximal benefit of neuroscience discoveries for society.