R. Alta Charo is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she is on the faculty of the Law School and the Medical School’s Department of Medical History and Bioethics. She also serves on the faculty of the UW Masters in Biotechnology Studies program and lectures in the MPH program of the Dept of Population Health Sciences. She is on leave for the 2009-2010 academic year to serve as a senior advisor in the Office of the Commissioner at the US Food & Drug Administration.
Professor Charo served as a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project, where she was a member of the HHS review team, focusing her attention particularly on transition issues related to NIH, FDA, bioethics, stem cell policy, and women’s reproductive health. From January to December 2006, she was a visiting professor of law at the University of California — Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall). In 2005, she was elected as a fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters and in 2006 she was elected to membership in the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine.
Professor Charo is the author of nearly 100 articles, book chapters and government reports on topics including voting rights, environmental law, family planning and abortion law, medical genetics law, reproductive technology policy, science policy and research ethics. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the “Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics,” “Cloning: Science and Policy,” “Public Library of Science — Medicine,” and the “Monash Bioethics Review.”
Professor Charo is a member of many boards, including the National Medical Advisory Committee of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the Foundation for AIDS Research among others. She is also on several expert advisory boards of organizations with an interest in stem cell research.