Dr Nishakanthi Gopalan is a Senior Lecturer at the Medical Humanities and Ethics Unit (MedHEU), a newly established unit within the Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya (UM). She is a biotechnologist by training with a PhD in research ethics and policy implication particularly looking at stem cell technology. During this time, she published her key findings in several reputable high-impact bioethics journals.

Dr Nisha is the Programme Coordinator of the Master of Health Research Ethics (MOHRE), a programme developed incollaboration with the Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Besides teaching in MOHRE, she also provides ethics lectures in other programmes in the faculty. Dr Nisha also contributes as a member of the Universiti Malaya Research Ethics Committee (UMREC) as well as an external member of the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) Medical Research Ethics Committee. She is one of the instructors for the Introduction to Health Research Ethics, an online course in FutureLearn. She also facilitates the APRU Health Research Ethics course. Additionally, Dr. Nisha is an editorial board member of the Asian Bioethics Review.

Dr Nisha’s research interest includes different aspects of ethics such as bioethics, research and clinical ethics on diverse topics ranging from emerging technologies (such as regenerative medicine, stem cells, and genetic testing), health research, and aesthetic medicine. She is an expert in qualitative research methods such as in depth interviews, focus group discussion (FGD), inductive and deductive analysis, thematic analysis,grounded theory, as well as narrative and scoping reviews. Currently, Dr Nisha is working on a bioethics training grant (Fogarty International Centre, NIH US) with Johns Hopkins University (JHU),  the ethics of genetic testing among Parkinson’s patients (USMC Care Fund), ethics and governance in AI in healthcare and understanding the ethics committee deliberarion process. She is constantly on the look out for collaborations with local/regional/international projects on various topics involving ethics.