Seema Kirti Shah

Seema K. Shah, JD, Associate Professor in Pediatrics at Northwestern University Medical School and an Associate Director of the Bioethics Program at Lurie Children’s Hospital, is an expert in the fields of pediatrics and global health research ethics, as well as on ethical issues in the determination of death. After attending Stanford University, Shah completed a fellowship in bioethics at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center. She then received legal training at Stanford and in a federal district court clerkship. Shah was previously on faculty at the University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Hospital and at the NIH Clinical Center Department of Bioethics. Shah has chaired an NIH committee on ethical considerations in conducting Zika virus human challenge trials, and lectured on the ethics of clinical research at conferences run by PRIM&R, ASBH, IAB, ASTMH, and internationally in such locations as Botswana, South Africa, the Netherlands, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, Brazil, and Zimbabwe.

Seema Shah's research is focused around the following question: When is it ethically and legally acceptable to expose some people to risk for the benefit of others? She has examined this in several different domains, including HIV/AIDS research, pediatric research, and the ethics of human challenge trials.