Holly Fernandez Lynch, associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and associate professor at Penn Carey Law School, has received the 2026 Greenwall Foundation Bernard Lo Award in honor of her outstanding achievement in bioethics research.
Professor Fernandez Lynch focuses her work on clinical research ethics and regulation, access to investigational medicines, and FDA pharmaceutical policy, especially approaches to drug development and early approval pathways for diseases with unmet treatment needs like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). She is a senior fellow with Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics; the immediate past president of the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics; and the founder and co-chair of the Consortium to Advance Effective Research Ethics Oversight, a collaborative initiative to define, measure, and improve the quality and effectiveness of institutional review boards and human research protection programs.
Previously, Professor Fernandez Lynch was a bioethicist in the National Institutes of Health Division of AIDS and an analyst for President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Before coming to Penn, she was executive director of Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics and a faculty member in the master of bioethics program at Harvard Medical School.
Professor Fernandez Lynch holds a bachelor’s degree in health and societies/bioethics, a master’s degree in bioethics, and a juris doctorate, all from the University of Pennsylvania.