Winston Chiong, MD, PhD, is an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology Memory and Aging Center and is the principal investigator of the Decision Lab. His work is informed by interdisciplinary training in clinical medicine, philosophy, and cognitive neuroscience. His lab addresses the neural bases of decision-making in the aging brain in both health and disease, and the ethical and policy implications of alterations to brain function. He is co-chair of the UCSF Department of Neurology Diversity Committee and is a member of the UCSF Medical Center Ethics Committee. Nationally, he serves on the Neuroethics Working Group of the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Multi-Council Working Group and the American Academy of Neurology’s Ethics, Law and Humanities Committee.

Among other topics, his research has addressed racial/ethnic and sociocultural barriers to advance care planning. He led the first study in a nationally representative sample to examine sociocultural hypotheses for racial/ethnic disparities in advance directive possession, finding that racial differences are not explained by such factors (since corroborated in multiple studies). He helped to design advance care planning interventions for the Care Ecosystem caregiver support program, addressing barriers among Spanish-speaking, Cantonese-speaking and rural participants. He has served as a co-mentor on three successful NIH diversity supplement applications. In future/proposed work he plans to utilize interdisciplinary approaches (including philosophy and the social sciences) to address topics including equity in access to new neurotherapeutics and the relationship between neurology and disability.

Learn more about Dr. Chiong here.