Jodi Halpern

Jodi Halpern, MD, PhD holds a University Chair and is Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. Her work brings together psychiatry, philosophy, affective forecasting and decision neuroscience to elucidate how people imagine and influence their own and each other’s future health possibilities and the role leaders can play. Her book, From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice was called a “seminal work” by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Her upcoming book Remaking the Self in the Wake of Loss examines the role of empathy in post-traumatic growth.

Dr. Halpern’s research articles focus on innovative technologies, ethics, empathy and leadership. She co-founded and is the Co-Director of the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science and the Public and leads the Berkeley Group for the Ethics and Regulation of Innovative Technology. Her current book project “Engineering Empathy” examines how AI-simulated empathy is changing relationships. She is engaged in policy, currently in creating guardrails to protect minors from risks associated with companion chatbots. She advised the California Senate on SB 243 which became the first law requiring chatbot companies to collect and report data on associated suicidality. Recent media interviews include NPR, KQED, ABC, PBS, CBC, France 5, Wired, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and New Scientist.

Halpern is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including the Greenwall Faculty Scholars Fellowship, the Rockefeller Fellowship at Princeton and the 2022 Guggenheim Award in Health and Medicine. Halpern’s scholarship investigating empathic curiosity for therapeutic impact and to bridge societal divides is recognized worldwide, and in 2024 she received the Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in Empathy and Healthcare from The International Network for Empathy and Leadership in Healthcare.