NIH Awards $1.6M Grant for MRI Ethics Project To be Based at Consortium of Law & Values

A new National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant of approximately $1.6M will bring together medical and legal experts to produce ethics recommendations for the use of breakthrough MRI technology that is portable and cloud-based.

The principal investigators of the four-year project, which will based at the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences, are Professors Francis Shen, Susan Wolf, and Frances Lawrenz. The grant comes through the NIH’s Neuroethics Division of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.

The U of M entities participating in the interdisciplinary effort include the Law School, Medical School, Graduate Program in Neuroscience, Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR), Institute for Child and Adolescent Brain Health, and Departments of Neurology, Radiology, and Educational Psychology.

The new MRI technology, currently being developed at the CMRR, will allow neuroimaging research in underrepresented populations and diverse field settings. Among the ethical issues that will be explored are: informed consent, data privacy, and return of results. 

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Francis Shen
Professor of Law
Solly Robbins Distinguished Research Fellow
Susan M. Wolf
Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine & Public Policy
Faegre Baker Daniels Professor of Law
Professor of Medicine