Professional Biography
Michael Yudell is a public health scientist whose work focuses on the history and ethics of public health and medicine, including projects on the history and ethics of genomics, the history of the race concept, and the history and ethics of autism research. Dr. Yudell received his Ph.D. and M.P.H. from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, an M.Phil. in U.S. history from the Graduate Center at the Center University of New York, and his B.A. in history and Soviet and Eastern European studies from Tufts University.
Dr. Yudell is the author of Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the 20th Century (Columbia University Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Arthur J. Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association. The book examines the way biologists shaped the race concept during the 20th century from eugenics to the sequencing of the human genome. Additionally, the work has important implications for bioethics and public health ethics given the role of race in patient care and in our understanding of the health of populations. Dr. Yudell is also the author of several books with Rob DeSalle, including Welcome to the Genome: A User's Guide to the Genetic Past, Present, and Future (John Wiley and Sons, 2nd Edition 2020) and the edited collection The Genomic Revolution: Unveiling the Unity of Life (Joseph Henry Press of the National Academy of Science, 2002).
Along with Dr. Samuel K. Roberts, Yudell edits the Columbia University Press Series Race, Inequality, and Health. This series combines work in history, the social sciences, the biological sciences, and public health to deepen our understanding of how ideological and scientific claims about race and race difference have impacted health and society historically and in the present day. Yudell also conducts research on autism and ethics, including a National Science Foundation project examining the ethics of community-engaged autism research. He is writing A Way of Being Human, a history of autism spectrum disorders (Columbia University Press). Finally, Yudell is Chair of the Pennsylvania Secretary of Health’s Newborn Screening and Follow-up Technical Advisory Board.
