Faculty of Law Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor appointed to European Group on Ethics
Press Release No. 18/2022
21 February 2022
Heidelberg legal expert joins the EU Commission’s advisory body
Heidelberg legal scholar Prof. Dr Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor has been appointed to the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE). This body advises the European Commission on ethical and social issues arising from scientific and technological innovations, and also on related questions of fundamental rights. Prof. Molnár-Gábor’s lecturing and research takes place at the Faculty of Law of Heidelberg University, at the interface between health and medical law. A further emphasis of her work is data protection law. The EGE is made up of 15 experts from different scientific disciplines, with Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor as the only academic from Germany.
The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies was founded in 1991 in order to advise the European Commission on all aspects of policy and law. The members come from the fields of law, natural and social sciences, as well as philosophy and ethics. That is designed to guarantee an independent, interdisciplinary perspective on ethical issues. Apart from COVID-19, the advisory body has lately worked mainly on the topics of genome-editing, artificial intelligence and the future of work. The European Group on Ethics is regarded as an important point of reference for the 27 national ethics councils in the member states of the European Union.
Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor studied law at Heidelberg University and Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest (Hungary). She worked at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg while doing her doctorate; in addition, she was on the academic staff of the Institute for Financial and Tax Law and the Department of Academic Theology of Ruperto Carola. In 2015 Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor gained her doctorate with a thesis on the international regulation of biotechnology on the example of new genetic analyses at the Faculty of Law. As a fellow of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities she headed a research group investigating European data protection and data exchange in genetic research. At the end of last year she accepted the professorship in “international health and medical law, and data protection law”, which is based at Heidelberg University’s Faculty of Law. Prof. Molnár-Gábor has already received several awards for her research, including the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the German Research Foundation.