Effy Vayena is a senior fellow at the Institute of Biomedical Ethics, University of Zurich and the academic coordinator of the PhD program in Biomedical Ethics and Law/medical track. Before joining the IBME she worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva where she was involved with the Organization’s activities on infertility, assisted reproduction and research ethics. She has served as a member of the WHO's Research Ethics Review committee and she continues consulting for the Organization.

She has published on the ethics of health research, on issues surrounding assisted reproductive technologies, biobanks, pediatric research, genomics and research with online health data. Her current research focus is on ethical and policy issues that arise in the areas of genomics (including direct-to-consumer genomics), personalized medicine and the novel uses of online health data for research. Specific projects include: informed consent in online health research and the issue of ethical oversight in participant-centric research initiatives.