Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
John B. Nalbandian serves as a United States Circuit Judge from Kentucky on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was nominated and confirmed to that position in 2018. Prior to that, Judge Nalbandian was a partner in the litigation practice group of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, where he served as the firm’s lead appellate lawyer and also practiced complex litigation in state and federal courts. Judge Nalbandian was board certified by the Ohio State Bar Association as a specialist in appellate law. Prior to joining Taft, Judge Nalbandian practiced for five years in the appellate section of Jones Day in Washington, DC. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Nalbandian clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston. While in private practice, he also served as a board member of the State Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization established by the federal government to improve the administration of justice in state courts. He served as President of the Cincinnati Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. He has also been involved in his community as a board member of the Greater Cincinnati Minority Counsel Program, and as a board member of the Asian Pacific Bar Association of Southwest Ohio. Judge Nalbandian earned his B.S., magna cum laude, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as managing editor of the Virginia Law Review.
Professor Emerita of Law and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin
Alta Charo (BA biology Harvard ’79; JD law Columbia ’82) is professor emerita of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin and now works as a consultant to companies, government and NGOs on biotechnology ethics and regulatory policy. In government she worked for the congressional Office of Technology Assessment; USAID; and the FDA. She was a member of President Clinton's National Bioethic Advisory Commission, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and the National Academy of Medicine, where she co-chaired its committees on stem cell research and on human genome editing governance.
President and Founding Board Member, Science Alliance for Life and Technology (SALT)
David A. Prentice, Ph.D. is President and Founding Board Member of the Science Alliance for Life and Technology (SALT) with almost 50 years’ experience as a scientific researcher, professor, academic leader and policy advisor. He is the former Advisory Board Chair and Founding Member for the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center, a unique comprehensive adult stem cell center in Kansas that he was instrumental in creating. Dr. Prentice established Stem Cell Research Facts, an educational website about adult stem cells. He earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Kansas. His previous service includes at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Professor of Life Sciences as well as Acting Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Indiana State University, Adjunct Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics at Indiana University School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Molecular Genetics at the John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America, Senior Fellow and Director for Life Sciences at the Family Research Council, and Vice President and Research Director at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Dr. Prentice has provided scientific lectures, policy briefings, and legislative testimonies in 40 states and 21 countries, including before the U.S. House and Senate and numerous state legislatures, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics, European Parliament, British Parliament, Canadian Parliament, Australian Parliament, German Bundestag, French Senate, Swedish Parliament, the United Nations, and the Vatican. In 2020, he was appointed by the Secretary of HHS to the federal Human Fetal Tissue Ethics Advisory Board. He has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific and bioethics articles, as well as public commentaries and op-eds, and travels nationally and internationally to give invited lectures and to advise professionals, policymakers, and the public regarding stem cell research, fetal tissue research, gene editing, cloning, embryology, cell, molecular and developmental biology, cell culture and vaccines, biochemistry, biotechnology, bioethics, and science policy.
Ethics & Public Policy Center, Robert Novak Journalism Fellow 2025
Katelyn Walls Shelton is a Visiting Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program. She is a women’s health policy expert and, as a 2025-2026 recipient of the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship, is conducting a year-long research project on reproductive biotechnology and human nature.
As the former Special Assistant for Global Women’s Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Ms. Shelton assisted in executing the Protecting Life in Global Health Policy (PLGHP) initiative at the United Nations and World Health Organization. A former Paul Ramsey Bioethics Fellow, she often writes on women’s reproductive health and the beginning of life.
Katelyn received a master’s degree in ethics from Yale Divinity School, where she also completed coursework at Yale Law, and a dual bachelor’s degree from Union University. She’s an inaugural opinion contributor to WORLD Magazine and her work and commentary have appeared in a diverse range of outlets, including Fox News, The Gospel Coalition, Washington Examiner, Slate, and Mother Jones, among others.
She and her husband, John, live with their four young children near Washington, D.C.
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Joel M. Zinberg, M.D., J.D. is a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He is a native New Yorker who recently completed two years as General Counsel and Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President. He practiced general and oncologic surgery in New York for nearly 30 years at the Mount Sinai Hospital and Icahn School of Medicine where he is an Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery. He has been involved with health policy issues and the interaction between law and medicine for his entire career. Dr. Zinberg taught for 10 years at the Columbia University Law School as a Lecturer in Law where he created a course on the legal, policy and ethical issues surrounding organ transplantation. He served for many years on the New York State Board of Professional Medical Conduct and on Mount Sinai's Ethics Committee and Institutional Review Board. He is past President and Trustee of the New York County Medical Society. Between 2015 and 2017 he was a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Dr. Zinberg has written for publications as varied as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, the Wall Street Journal, City Journal and law reviews. He is the author of book chapters on legal and policy issues in organ transplantation.
He received his J.D. degree from the Yale Law School, his M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and his B.A. in economics with High Honors, Phi Beta Kappa, from Swarthmore College.
The Gene of the Law: Legal Frontiers in Biotechnology
John B. Nalbandian, R. Alta Charo, David Prentice, Katelyn Shelton
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. Breakthroughs in biotechnology are reshaping medicine...
Explainer Episode 20 – COVID-19 Vaccine Approval and Distribution
Joel Zinberg
Joel Zinberg joins the podcast to discuss a range of COVID-19 vaccine questions. How has the development...