Hi, I'm Ozan Gurcan, Postdoctoral instructor in Science, Society, and Public Policy at Caltech
About me
I am a moral philosopher with a background in biomedical sciences and qualitative research methods. In conjunction with my postdoctoral research at Caltech, I am Adjunct Professor at the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. I do bioethics research at the intersection of science, society and policy. Here is a youtube video about my work.
I am currently researching different ways of conceiving of and preparing for future forms of genetic discrimination. I am developing an ELSI tool that can be used to think through the ethical dimensions of the potential uses of emerging genomic technologies in the reproductive sphere. This tool will be based on my theory of a morality of inclusion, and pay close attention to effective ways to communicate ethical insights to policymakers.
At Caltech, I am working closely with philosopher of science, Frederick Eberhardt, and political & computational social scientist, R. Michael Alvarez. I am learning digital bioethics methods.
More about my research interests and projects can be found on my research page.
California Institute of Technology
Public Health Ethics:
Prior to Caltech, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was Policy Analyst in the Science Excellence division of the Public Health Agency of Canada. I was responsible for the research, analysis, and development of policies, reports, and guidelines to advance the management of science and research activities within the Agency. I worked on topics such as:
Emergency preparedness; non-pharmaceutical interventions; macro & micro-allocation;
High consequence infectious diseases (HCID); surveillance
Informed consent; information sharing and privacy; vaccine hesitancy
Trust between communities & public health officials; scientific integrity; publication ethics
Effective communication of science to the public; non-stigmatizing risk communication
My research skills in the domain of public policy are:
Qualitative methods
Multi-goal policy analysis
Regulatory gap analysis
Privacy impact assessment
At PHAC I received several certifications, knowledge from which I use regularly in my research:
You can find me on LinkedIn here