Wexler Lab - People - WEXLER LAB

Anna Wexler

Principal Investigator

Anna Wexler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the principal investigator of the Wexler Lab, where she studies the ethical, legal, and social issues surrounding emerging technology, with a particular focus on do-it-yourself medicine, direct-to-consumer health products, and neuroethics.

Dr. Wexler is the recipient of a 2018 NIH Director's Early Independence Award, a Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholar, and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. She received her Ph.D. from MIT in the HASTS (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology & Society) Program, where her dissertation centered on the DIY brain stimulation movement. Her essays have been published in outlets such as the The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Slate, and STAT.

Prior to her Ph.D., Dr. Wexler spent several years working as documentary filmmaker and science/travel writer. She co-directed and co-produced the feature documentary Unorthodox (2013). She received a dual BS from MIT in Brain and Cognitive Science, and in Humanities and Science with a focus in Writing and Neuroscience.

Google Scholar page | UPenn website

Juhi Farooqui

Postdoctoral Fellow

Juhi Farooqui is a neurotechnology and neuroethics researcher interested in the ethical development and dissemination of novel neurotechnologies. She holds a PhD in Neural Computation from Carnegie Mellon University. Her doctoral work, completed with the University of Pittsburgh's Rehab Neural Engineering Labs, combined a human-centered design (HCD) framework, qualitative interview methodology, and computational modeling of neural structures to address issues of access and inclusion in the development of somatosensory neuroprosthesis technologies. Juhi's postdoctoral work focuses on embedding ethics in neurotechnology industry and co-creating ethics research with neurotechnology industry partners.

Betty Cohn

Postdoctoral Fellow

Betty Cohn holds a PhD in Public Health Genetics from the University of Washington, a Master of Bioethics from the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and a B.A. from Binghamton University. Her research examines the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging biotechnologies, including direct-to-consumer genetic testing, brain organoids, and polygenic risk scores. Her doctoral dissertation used qualitative methods to explore how individuals who discover a misattributed parentage experience through genetic testing navigate these findings, with a focus on online communities as sources of social support.

Lab alumni:

Michael Edozie (MBE capstone project, 2026)
Jonah Toennies (MBE capstone project, 2025)
Gianna Perez (2023-2025)
Jasmine Michel (Dana Foundation Neuroscience and Society Summer Scholar, summer 2025)
Rachel White (MBE capstone project, 2024)
Adam Czernuszenko (MBE capstone project, 2024)
Blake Hereth (postdoc, 2023-2024)
Rebekah Choi (project manager, 2018-2023)
Susannah Colt (MBE capstone project, 2023)
Nina Wei (research assistant, 2021-2023)
Ashwini Nagappan (research assistant & research scientist, 2019-2023)
Louiza Kalokairinou (post-doc, 2020-2022)
Deena Kopyto (research assistant, 2019-2021)
Andrew Beswerchij (research assistant, 2019)
Ashu Mishra (research assistant, 2019)
Marilyn Baffoe-Bonnie (research assistant, 2018)