Winston Chiong, MD, PhD, is the Mary Oakley Foundation Professor of Neuroethics in the UCSF Department of Neurology at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences, where he is based at the UCSF Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center. He is the principal investigator of the UCSF Decision Lab, and his clinical practice focuses on Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and other cognitive disorders of aging.
Dr. Chiong’s research bridges neuroscience, ethics, and health policy, with two main areas of focus. He investigates the neural basis of decision-making in the aging brain, examining how brain systems involved in financial and medical decisions are affected by health and disease. He also studies the ethical, policy, and health equity implications of altered brain function, drawing on the experiences of patients with brain diseases and individuals undergoing emerging brain-based therapies.
As director of UCSF Bioethics and a member of the UCSF Medical Center Ethics Committee, Dr. Chiong plays a key role in addressing complex ethical issues in healthcare and research. Beyond UCSF, he serves on the Neuroethics Working Group for the NIH BRAIN Initiative Multi-Council Working Group and is a member of the Board of Directors for the International Neuroethics Society.
Dr. Chiong’s interdisciplinary training in clinical medicine, philosophy, and cognitive neuroscience informs his research and clinical work. He earned his PhD in philosophy from New York University and his MD from UCSF, followed by an internship in internal medicine at Stanford University and neurology residency training at UCSF. He completed postdoctoral research in cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging at UC Berkeley, along with clinical training in dementia at the UCSF Fein Memory and Aging Center.