Virginie Pirard

Virginie Pirard is a jurist and philosopher, specialized in bioethics and research ethics (including epidemics ethics). Since December 2023, she is Vice-President of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics (mandate 2023-2027) where she also co-chairs the sub-committee on euthanasia.

Since April 2024, she is part of the FWB-COARA Project, a collaborative initiative between the 5 French-speaking Universities in Belgium to improve the research evaluation ecosystem. As such, she leads for Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) the WP dedicated to the mapping and fostering of research ethics committees.

She also teaches ethics to healthcare professionals (Haute Ecole Libre de Bruxelles) and conducts academic research at ULB on the growing impact of bioethics worldwide and the role and legitimacy of ethics committees. Her work is based on over 15 years' experience as chair or member in the 3 main kind of ethics committees: National Ethics Committee (NEC), Institutional Review Board (Institut Pasteur, Paris) and Hospital-based Clinical Ethics Committee (Cliniques Saint Jean, Brussels).

Working at an international level, she recently took part to the WHO-led steering Committee of the 2024 NEC Global Summit and introduced as a speaker the first session of the Summit. Since November 2024, she co-leads (with Pr. Pinsart) an international consortium (8 partners, 4 involved continents) dedicated to contribute to the future WHO guidelines embedding Ethics Committees in the WHO response to Climate change.

In the past, she worked as an advisor and expert in Bioethics in the office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Health (Belgium). From 2012, she worked as an ethicist at a world leading research institution, Institut Pasteur (Paris, France), where she created and headed the Ethics Unit until 2021. She was also coordinator of the EDCTP-funded AFREENET project (2018-2021, 300k euros) dedicated to supporting and strengthening the capacities of 3 national ethics committees in West Africa (Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea and Benin).

During the pandemic, she co-chaired the "COVID-19 Vaccination" sub-committee within the Belgian Bioethics Advisory Committee and was rapporteur for several opinions on COVID-19 vaccine prioritization and mandatory vaccination. She also contributed as a member in the WHO-led Working Group on the Monitored Emergency Use of Research Interventions (MEURI).