Associate professor Paul Scherz studies the intersection of religious ethics, science, technology and medicine. His first book, Science and Christian Ethics (Cambridge, 2019), used Stoic virtue theory as a lens to examine the moral formation of scientists in light of the contemporary reproducibility crisis, an ongoing methodological crisis in which the results of many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce. His most recent book, Tomorrow’s Troubles: Risk, Anxiety, and Prudence in an Age of Algorithmic Governance (Georgetown, 2022), examines the role that quantitative risk analysis plays in contemporary life. He has published articles on many topics in bioethics, such as human enhancement, genetic technology and end of life ethics, with this latter interest leading to a co-edited volume, The Evening of Life: The Challenges of Aging and Dying Well (Notre Dame, 2020). He is currently working on projects on the ethics of artificial intelligence and a book on the ethics of precision medicine.

Scherz holds a Ph.D. and M.T.S. in moral theology from the University of Notre Dame (2014, 2010), a Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University (2005) and a B.A. in molecular and cell biology from UC Berkeley (2001). Scherz has taught at the Catholic University of America, was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow at UCSF, and is a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at UVA.

Scherz will teach classes on bioethics, technology ethics and Christian ethics, including “Religion, Ethics, and Health Care” and “Death and Dying in the Christian Tradition.”