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Just in between two of our Northern California “atmospheric river” storm systems, we lucked out with beautiful weather for our fall BBQ. This year, we got to meet new lab member and epilepsy fellow Lara. And while they’ve been in the lab a while now and it wasn’t really an introduction, this was the first BBQ for Juliana, Carleigh, Jaaie, Chanel, and Ignacia. Furthermore, it was great to have lab alum Noah to give an update on his training in geropsychology.

One highlight of this year’s BBQ was that we had three dog guests - Winnie, Watson, and Ren - joining Jordy and Doc. (We did miss Yuzu, who made it last year; and Mazelle, not her kind of party.) Watson and Jordy in particular spent a good part of the BBQ zooming around the yard together. At the end we tried to get the dogs to pose together for a group photo, though Ren preferred to hang back in his shy way:

From October 22-25, members of the Decision Lab attended the 2025 conference of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) in Portland, Oregon. Postdocs Valerie and Juliana presented ongoing research. Valerie’s presentation, entitled ‘Ableism in Neurotech: What Neurotechnologist Perspectives Reveal,” shared early findings from the lab’s Human-Centered Design Neurotechnology project. Juliana presented on possibilities and challenges for meaningfully incorporating patients into health AI governance at academic medical centers. Both presentations sought to scratch beneath the surface of calls for including diverse groups in technology design, digging into subtle power relations that complicate the work of avoiding tech-based harms and equitably distributing benefits. Lab director Winston Chiong and Chanel Matney, lab affiliate and UCSF Bioethics program manager, also attended and ensured that the Decision Lab was well-represented in Portland.

Reflecting on the conference, lab members highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of ASBH. While interdisciplinarity may complicate the task of creating a shared foundation for presenting research, the convergence of philosophy, social science and clinical expertise at ASBH was a strength of the meeting. It afforded opportunities to see one’s own work from new angles and explore intellectual conversations one may not otherwise encounter. For example, Juliana attended talks that considered if and how clinicians should attend to the reasons patients give for refusing treatments recommended by providers. This invited reflection on the links between the lab’s work on dementia decision making and philosophical scholarship on reasons and reasoning outside dementia contexts.

Chanel observed that several affinity groups and panels explored how to pursue bioethics research in the current political moment. A panel on abolitionist bioethics - which featured UCSF sociologist Jennifer James - called for courage and boldness amid risks of censorship, while highlighting that what courage looks like may differ based on one’s positionality.Last but not least, Winston, Chanel, and Juliana attended the UCSF Bioethics dinner, enjoying conversation about all things ethics and non-ethics (if there is such a thing as ‘non-ethics,’ that is) over delicious food and drink. Until next year, ASBH!

Summer in SF means that the Decision Lab is back at the ballpark for garlic fries and beautiful bay views. Though we’ve had a run of SF’s infamous “June gloom” this month, the weather today was amazing and sunny. Also, while our Giants have honestly been a pretty boring team for the last few years and were expected to not do anything much this season, this year’s team has turned out to be a pretty scrappy and exciting group right in the middle of the playoff chase.

Today’s matchup unexpectedly got even more spicy as Rafael Devers, previously maybe the best hitter on the Red Sox, got traded to the Giants the week before our game. During the game, we got to see him hit his first home run as a Giant, against his former team. This ranks up with seeing Eddie Rosario hit for the cycle as one of the cooler baseball moments we’ve gotten to see together at a ballgame, and of course this one was better because it was to the Giants’ benefit. Someone proposed to his partner on the scoreboard, a pretty bold and romantic move (she said yes). And we got to see an exciting ending, coming down to the last out with the tying run at third base, which made for an excited and relieved crowd when the Giants pulled out the victory!

Sadly, it’s that time of year again, though it’s also exciting to see the next steps that our lab members are taking in their careers. We got together for some tasty Burmese food on Noah’s last day to celebrate, though unfortunately Chenyu couldn’t make it with some final program requirements.

Noah joined the lab back in 2021, during the pandemic, and has been a great source of continuity and support for our newer research coordinators–particularly through the transitions of the last year. Manizhe has been a behavioral neurology fellow training at the Memory and Aging Center, also with an ethics project selected for the American Academy of Neurology’s NITCEE (Neurologist-in-training Clinical Ethics Elective) program. And Chenyu has been a great asset to the lab, coming to us as one of the first students in UCSF’s new Master’s in Health Data Science program and bringing his quantitative skills to some of our tricky data. So excited to see what you all do next!

Continuing on the theme of international scientific travel, Pongpat Putthinun was at the AAIC Satellite Meeting in Lima, Peru, to present on strategies to improve knowledge about healty behaviors to prevent dementia in Thailand, with potential implications for other low- or middle-income countries. Congrats Pongpat!

We recently welcomed Juliana to Decision Lab and Chanel to UCSF Bioethics, and then very soon afterwards traveled together to exchange ideas and hopefully initaite new collaborations with scholars from around the world at the International Neuroethics Society meeting in Munich. As other exciting news, we will co-host next year’s Neuroethics 2026 meeting, which will be utilizing a new multi-hub global model with hubs in Palo Alto, Tuscany, and we hope a few other places. We are very excited about this new plan and look forward to providing more updates about this model soon.