Jennifer A. Chandler studies the legal and ethical aspects of biomedical science and technology, with a focus on the intersection of the brain sciences, law and ethics. In 2025, she was awarded a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Law and Ethics of Brian Technologies, and she is the 2024 recipient of the International Neuroethics Society’s Steven E Hyman Award.She teaches mental health law and neuroethics, tort law, and medico-legal issues.
In her research, she collaborates with a diverse international group of researchers and clinicians. She currently leads the Neurospeech project - an interdisciplinary research group studying the human rights and other legal issues related to the development of communication neurotechnologies. This project brings together experts in philosophy, sociology, linguistics, speech language pathology, neuroscience, engineering, medicine, as well as lived experience of communication impairments.
Recent interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of the brain sciences, law and ethics included her leadership of the publication of the first international comparative study of the laws of “psychosurgery” with the contributions of leading functional neurosurgeons from Europe, Asia and the Americas. She also coordinated the Hybrid Mindsproject bringing together researchers from Switzerland, Germany and Canada to examine the implications of embedding artificial intelligence within neuroprosthetics.
Jennifer Chandler regularly contributes to Canadian governmental policy on contentious matters of biomedicine. As a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, she chaired a national assessment of Canadian policy related to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder at the request of the Canadian Government. This major report, completed in 2025, was produced to support government policy in this complex area of public health policy.
Prior to this she was a member of the Government’s independent panel advising on safeguards related to medical assistance in dying in the context of mental illness in 2022, and was a member of the 2018 government-commissioned National Expert Panel on Medical Assistance in Dying. She co-chaired the law and ethics working group of a Canadian Blood Services-sponsoredclinical guideline development process looking at the definition of brain death and criteria for the determination of brain death, and is currently supporting theclinical guideline development process for the Canadian policy regarding alcohol abstinence and liver transplantation. She is a former chair of the Ethics Committee of the Canadian Society for Transplantation.
Professor Chandler is a founding member of theBioethics Council for Canada, where she sits on the Board of Directors. She also serves as a Director for the Royal’s Institute for Mental Health Researchin Ottawa.
Her ethico-legal and qualitative empirical research at the cutting edge of advances in biomedical science and technology has been funded by CIHR, SSHRC, Canadian Blood Services, the Stem Cell Network, Genome Canada, Law Foundation of Ontario and the Canadian National Transplant Research Program.
She holds degrees in Law from Harvard University and Queen’s University, and a degree in Biology from the University of Western Ontario. She a Full Professor in the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, with cross-appointment to the Faculty of Medicine.