Gerard Vong
Gerard Vong, DPhil, is Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Arts in Bioethics program at Emory University. A philosopher and policy-focused bioethicist, his research explores ethical questions at the intersection of scarce resource allocation, health care, and moral theory with a particular focus on the fairness and unfairness of distributive lottery systems. He has published single-authored and collaborative research in leading philosophy, bioethics, clinical, and interdisciplinary journals including Ethics, the Journal of Medical Ethics, Nature Reviews Nephrology, and Economics & Philosophy. He is a founding editorial board member of the Journal of Sortition. Dr. Vong is active in policy work, including co-authoring guidelines for the ethical allocation of scarce inpatient and outpatient resources for Emory Healthcare before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also served in an advisory capacity to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition to his research and policy contributions, Dr. Vong advances the future of bioethics through cross-institutional academic leadership. In 2019, Dr. Vong founded the Graduate Bioethics Program Directors (GBPD), a subgroup of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors, which promotes collaboration and shared best practices amongst advanced degree programs in bioethics throughout North America. In 2021, Dr. Vong founded the Cross-Institutional Undergraduate Sponsorship Program in Bioethics (CUSP), a leading initiative that promotes diversity and early-career development in bioethics which has financially supported over 60 students and garnered broad institutional and foundation support. Dr. Vong continues to lead GBPD and CUSP and in 2025 was elected to the Board of Directors at the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities.
Dr. Vong is also recognized for his interdisciplinary teaching and mentorship of different student audiences, including being honored during the Emory School of Medicine Educator’s Appreciation Day in 2025 and winning multiple bioethics mentorship awards. He welcomes graduate students interested in supervision on issues related to scarce resource allocation, health care policy implementation, and moral philosophy.
Prior to joining Emory, Dr. Vong was a faculty fellow-in-residence at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, and Jane Eliza Procter graduate fellow at Princeton University. He completed graduate studies at Oxford University (B.Phil and D.Phil) and undergraduate studies at the Australian National University (BA and BSci).