Prof. Susan Wolf Receives Regents Professorship, University’s Highest Faculty Honor

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents recently named Professor Susan Wolf a Regents Professor. The designation, granted last week, is the highest level of recognition given to faculty by the University.

"Professor Wolf is a world-renowned scholar who researches and teaches on the cutting edge of law, medicine, and bioethics” said Garry W. Jenkins, dean and William S. Pattee Professor of Law. “Her pioneering interdisciplinary work and her efforts to advance sound policy and best practices have had a truly profound influence on the state and the nation, and they remain more important than ever, as proven by the recent global pandemic. I am delighted that the University has recognized her extraordinary contributions to her field, our students, and the public good.”

In addition to being a Regents Professor, Wolf is the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine & Public Policy; Faegre Baker Daniels Professor of Law; and Professor of Medicine. She is chair of the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences and Founding Director of the Joint Degree Program in Law, Science & Technology.

Wolf is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI), and an elected fellow of The Hastings Center as well as a past-member of the Fellows’ Council. She has received numerous grants to support her research, including from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and The Greenwall Foundation. In 2007-2010, Wolf served as a member of the Law & Neuroscience Project funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She has served as a senior consultant to The Hastings Center on its project on guidelines for end-of-life care, funded by the Donaghue Foundation and Sussman Trust. In 2012, she received a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Investigator Award in Health Policy Research to fund research in 2012-14.

Wolf teaches in the areas of health law, law and science, and bioethics. She is the faculty chair of the Law School’s Concentration in Health Law & Bioethics. She was co-holder of the 1999-2000 Julius E. Davis Chair in Law, a 1998-99 Opperman Research Scholar, a 1996 recipient of the John K. & Elsie Lampert Fesler Research Grant, and a 1996 recipient of a University of Minnesota Medical School Merit Award.

Wolf has served on a variety of governmental and institutional panels, including for the National Academies, as well as the American Bar Association (ABA) Coordinating Group on Bioethics and the Law, American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) Ethics Committee, New York City AIDS Review Panel, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Ethics Committee. In April 2020, she was appointed to co-lead a statewide Minnesota COVID Ethics Collaborative created to rapidly share expertise and support sound ethical policy to cope with the moral challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis.

The Board of Regents will formally honor Wolf at its meeting on Sept. 10.  She joins Professor Fionnuala Ni Aolain and Professor Emeritus David Weissbrodt as law faculty to carry the Regents Professor title. 

Susan M. Wolf
Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine & Public Policy
Faegre Baker Daniels Professor of Law
Professor of Medicine