Biography & Research:
John Noel M. Viaña, M.Sc., is a PhD student in Neuroethics (Society and Culture) at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia. He holds an Erasmus Mundus Master's in Neuroscience degree where he did his first year Research Master's in Neurosciences at the VU University Amsterdam and his second year Master's in Biology, specialty in Neurosciences and Neuropsychopharmacology, at the University of Bordeaux. He also has a Bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from the University of the Philippines Diliman. He was a short-term visiting student at the Neurophilosophy, Medical Ethics, and Neuroethics group at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Department of Philosophy and Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington, Neuroethics Canada at the University of British Columbia, and the Brain and Mental Health Laboratory at Monash University. He has also completed the 2017 Sherwin B. Nuland Summer Institute in Bioethics at Yale University.
Mr. Viaña's PhD research is focused on the ethics of neurosurgical procedures such as deep brain stimulation, cell implantation, and gene therapy for Alzheimer's disease. In addition, he has conducted work and published on media portrayals of 3D bioprinting, communication of the Human Brain Project, ethical issues in psychiatric applications of decoded neurofeedback, phenomenological effects of deep brain stimulation, and the implications of psychiatric genomics.