Four New Stehr–Boldt Fellows Join the IBME
The IBME is pleased to welcome four Stehr–Boldt Fellows, who will be joining the institute between September 2026 and February 2027: Leticia Correa, Federico Giovannini, Mojtaba Kiaei, and Gamze Kaya.
Leticia Correa (Brazil) will conduct a research project on the ethics of palliative care, titled "Empathic Communication as a Pathway to Human Dignity in End-of-Life Care." Leticia is a lawyer specialising in medical law and public health, advising patients and their families, particularly in situations involving serious illness and in the implementation of advance care planning. Alongside her legal practice, she is pursuing a PhD in bioethics at the University of Brasília under the supervision of Professor Aline Albuquerque, who was herself a visiting researcher at the IBME in 2010. Her research at the IBME will be supervised by Anna Elsner and Roberto Andorno.
Federico Giovannini (Italy) will conduct a research project on the ethics of data-driven decision-making in healthcare, titled "Embedding Ethical Reasoning into Data-Driven Decision Support for Healthcare Policy and Management: A Normative and Applied Framework." Federico holds a BSc and MSc in Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology from the University of Trento (specialising in Cancer Biology, thesis grade 110/110 cum laude) and is currently pursuing an Advanced Master in Bioethics at KU Leuven. Alongside his scientific training, he has a parallel background as a professional harpist and has contributed to interdisciplinary projects on research misconduct (the Euregio MiSH Project) and RNA-based therapies for neurodegenerative disease. His research at the IBME will be supervised by Federico Germani.
Gamze Kaya (Turkey) will conduct a research project on the ethics of health data governance, titled "Reimagining Ethical Governance in Big Health Data: Developing a Trust-Based Framework for Emerging Technologies." Gamze holds an MSc in Bioethics from Acıbadem University (awarded a full scholarship; thesis on FAIR principles and a federated, blockchain-based system for ethical health data governance) and a BSc in Philosophy from Hacettepe University. She has worked as a research and teaching assistant at Acıbadem University, including on a project digitising and analysing Ottoman Turkish medical periodicals, and has published on environmental ethics and the history of medicine. Her research proposal expresses particular interest in engaging with Prof. Nikola Biller-Andorno's work on ethical governance during her stay at the IBME.
Prof. Mojtaba Kiaei (Iran) will conduct a research project on citizen participation in digital health governance, titled "Comparative Analysis of Citizen Participation in Digital Health Policy-Making: Case Studies from Switzerland and the Nordic Countries." Mojtaba is a public policy scholar whose research focuses on citizen engagement, institutional trust, and the governance of complex public systems, combining qualitative and mixed-methods approaches to examine how public institutions interact with citizens and how participatory processes shape legitimacy and decision-making. He is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at Islamic Azad University, where he has supervised more than 150 Master's and PhD theses and previously served as Head of the Public Administration Department. Building on this background, he is increasingly applying these insights to digital health governance, with a particular interest in trust, participation, and the ethical foundations of data-driven health systems.