Nita Farahany

Nita A. Farahany is one of the world's foremost scholars on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies — especially artificial intelligence and neuroscience. She is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law and Philosophy at Duke University and the founding director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, where she has built one of the leading programs bridging law, ethics, and the sciences.

Farahany studied genetics, cell, and developmental biology at Dartmouth College, earned a master's in biology from Harvard, and completed her M.A., J.D., and Ph.D. in philosophy at Duke. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, she became a defining voice in the young field of neuroethics. In 2010, President Obama appointed her to the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, where she served until 2017.

Her influence now spans the institutions writing the rules for the technologies to come. She is a U.S. delegate and elected co-chair of the UNESCO Expert Group on the Ethics of Neurotechnology, co-chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Neurotechnology, president of the International Neuroethics Society, and a commissioner on the Uniform Laws Commission. She is an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Law Institute, co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, and sits on the board of advisors of Scientific American.

In 2023 she published _The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology_, which crystallized her call for a new human right to cognitive liberty. Her TED talks on mental privacy and brain-sensing technology have been watched millions of times, and she is a sought-after voice in outlets from TIME and NPR to the World Economic Forum on how humanity can flourish as our brains become readable — and, potentially, hackable.