Dorothy Roberts, the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology in the Penn Carey Law School and the School of Arts & Sciences, the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights in the Penn Carey Law School, and the founding director of the Program on Race, Science & Society, has received the 2025 Bioethics Founders’ Award. The award, given annually by the Hastings Center for Bioethics, recognizes individuals from around the world who have made substantial, sustained contributions to bioethics in ways that have advanced thinking and practice in medicine, the life sciences, and public policy. 

Hastings Center president Vardit Ravitsky presented the award at a ceremony on October 23 at the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) annual conference in Portland, Oregon.

Professor Roberts has joint appointments in Penn’s Africana studies and sociology departments in the School of Arts & Sciences and in the Penn Carey Law School. She is a legal scholar and public policy researcher who works to expose racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems. Her work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. Her work sheds light on systemic inequities, considers the voices of those directly affected, and calls for a wholesale transformation of existing systems.