Ashley K. Fernandes, MD, PhD, is the Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

He received an MA in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University; an MD from The Ohio State University; and a PhD in Philosophy from Georgetown University, focusing on bioethics. Dr. Fernandes is board certified in General Pediatrics. Focusing on bioethics and professionalism educational scholarship, he was appointed the Director of Competency for Professionalism at the Ohio State College of Medicine in 2019. He currently directs ethics education for all pediatric residents at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. His scholarly interests include Medicine and the Holocaust studies, clinical ethics, the philosophy of medicine and medical professionalism, pediatric ethics, and philosophical anthropology as it relates to medical practice. He has presented his work at international and national forums, and is the author of scores of peer-reviewed publications and three book chapters. Dr. Fernandes is a Center for Medicine After the Holocaust (CMATH) Champion at The Ohio State University, teaches a graduate and medical school course on the subject, and was one of 15 international scholars invited to participate in a workshop in Berlin in 2018 to study contemporary issues surrounding assisted suicide and euthanasia, in light of the Holocaust.

Dr. Fernandes is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, an elected member of the AAP’s national Executive Committee on Bioethics, a member of the AOA Medical Honor Society, and a member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society, receiving the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine award twice—in 2020 and in 2010. He was appointed in 2020 to the NIH’s Ethics Advisory Panel on Human Fetal Tissue Research. He has also been the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including, in 2020, The Ohio State University College of Medicine’s Professor of the Year Award, the highest teaching award bestowed by a graduating class.