Sara Gerke headshot

Sara Gerke

Associate Professor of Law
Richard W. & Marie L. Corman Scholar
Associate Professor, European Union Center

Contact

gerke@illinois.edu
(217) 300-0943

Assistant:

Jackie Hadler
jhadler@illinois.edu
(217) 300-9119

Email
Curriculum Vitae
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About

About

Sara Gerke is an Associate Professor of Law and Richard W. & Marie L. Corman Scholar at the University of Illinois College of Law. She is also an Associate Professor at the European Union Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Illinois). Her research focuses on the ethical and legal challenges of artificial intelligence and big data for health care and health law in the United States and Europe. She also researches comparative law and ethics of other issues at the cutting edge of medical developments, such as the clinical translation of stem cell research, biological products, such as somatic cells, tissues, and gene therapy, reproductive medicine, such as mitochondrial replacement techniques, and digital health more generally.

Professor Gerke has over 80 publications in health law and bioethics, with a particular focus on AI and digital health. Her work has appeared in leading law journals (including The George Washington Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Stanford Technology Law Review, Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, and the Journal of Law and the Biosciences); leading medical and scientific journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine, Science, JAMA, BMJ, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Machine Intelligence, The Lancet Digital Health, and npj Digital Medicine); leading health policy and public health journals (including Milbank Quarterly and Health Affairs Forefront); and leading bioethics journals (including The Hastings Center Report, The American Journal of Bioethics, and the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics). She has contributed chapters to books published by Cambridge University Press, Wiley, Elsevier, Springer, Edward Elgar, and others. She is also the first editor of a stakeholder book on the clinical application of human induced pluripotent stem cells, published by Springer in 2020. Her work has been featured in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Times, Forbes, Scientific American, STAT, Bloomberg Law, CBC, USA Today, and others.

Professor Gerke has led and contributed to numerous interdisciplinary research projects drawing on her expertise in health law and bioethics, including research on AI in healthcare and emerging medical technologies such as robotics, bioprinting, bionics, and stem cell research, supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), as well as the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and other sources.

Professor Gerke is currently leading two major research projects. She is the head of the Illinois study of the legal and ethical implications raised by AI-assisted surgery in the interdisciplinary project CLASSICA (Validating AI in Classifying Cancer in Real-Time Surgery). This project is funded by the European Union through the Horizon Europe funding program, with a total of €6 million over four years and 11 partners from nine countries.

She also leads the Illinois study on addressing ethical and legal concerns raised by AI in colonoscopy in the interdisciplinary project OperA (Optimizing Colorectal Cancer Prevention Through Personalized Treatment With Artificial Intelligence). This five-year project consists of 17 partners from 13 countries and has received a total of €6 million in funding (i.e., €4.7 million from Horizon Europe and the remainder from a U.K. funding body).

Professor Gerke is also a Research Fellow under the Novo Nordisk Foundation Grant awarded to the International Collaborative Bioscience Innovation & Law Programme (Inter-CeBIL programme) at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen.

Beyond her scholarship, Professor Gerke teaches Torts, Health Law, and Food and Drug Law. With her expertise in the ethics and law of AI, big data, and digital health, she has also been frequently invited as a guest lecturer at other institutions, such as Harvard Medical School, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Stanford University, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), McGill University, University of Copenhagen, and the University of Oslo.

Professor Gerke’s work has been recognized by the scientific, ethical, medical, and legal communities. For example, she was named a 2025 Emerging Leader of the National Academy of Medicine and invited to attend the 2025 Richard and Hinda Rosenthal NAM Emerging Leaders Forum, held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. She was also selected as a 2021 Health Law Scholar by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics and the Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University School of Law.

Professor Gerke serves on several working groups and committees. For example, she is a member of the Bayer Bioethics Council, an editorial board member of npj Digital Medicine, an associate member of the Cancer Center at Illinois, and an Affiliated Faculty member of the Illinois College of Law’s Epstein Health Law and Policy Program. She is also the second faculty advisor to the Elder Law Journal and the faculty lead of the Health Law and AI Group of the Innovation Law and Technology Program at the Illinois College of Law.

Professor Gerke has also presented her work at over 100 national and international legal, medical, bioethics, industry, and stakeholder conferences and meetings, organized by institutions such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The President’s Cancer Panel, the National Academy of Medicine Leadership Consortium, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Stanford Law School, MIT, Yale Law School, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge.

Professor Gerke has contributed her expertise to national and international policy efforts. For example, she served as an external reviewer for the World Health Organization’s guidance on the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health. Professor Gerke was also a subject matter expert for the Federation of State Medical Boards’ 2024 report, Navigating the Responsible and Ethical Incorporation of Artificial Intelligence into Clinical Practice. She also shared her expertise with the President’s Cancer Panel and provided feedback on drafts of its report, Enhancing Patient Navigation with Technology to Improve Equity in Cancer Care: A Report to the President of the United States from the President’s Cancer Panel.

Before joining Illinois, Professor Gerke was an Assistant Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law and was promoted early to Associate Professor of Law in 2024. Previously, she served as a Research Fellow in Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and Law at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, where she oversaw the day-to-day work of the Project on Precision Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and the Law (PMAIL), including conducting law, policy, and ethics research; drafting reports and recommendations; and coordinating the Center’s efforts with collaborators at the Center for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law (CeBIL) at the University of Copenhagen as well as other partners. Before that, Professor Gerke was the General Manager of the Institute for German, European and International Medical Law, Public Health Law and Bioethics of the Universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim (IMGB).

Education

Dipl.-Jur. Univ., University of Augsburg
M.A. in Medical Ethics and Law, King’s College London

Areas of Expertise

Areas of Expertise

Health Law
Food and Drug Law
Bioethics
Privacy Law
Law and Medicine
Law and Technology
Torts
Comparative Law

Publications

Selected Publications

Sara Gerke, Ravi B. Parikh & I. Glenn Cohen, Utah’s Prescription-Renewal Pilot Program — Autonomous AI Managing Patient Care, 394 New Eng. J. Med. 1561 (2026).

Sara Gerke, Jacob Balamut & Jennifer K. Wagner, The FDA’s Plan to Phase Out Animal Testing, Trends in Biotechnology (2026).

Sara Gerke, A Comprehensive Labeling Framework for Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML)-Based Medical Devices: From AI Facts Labels to a Front-Of-Package AI Labeling System — Lessons Learned From Food Labeling, 74 Emory Law Journal 1297 (2025).

Sara Gerke, Melissa B. Jacoby & I. Glenn Cohen, Bankruptcy, Genetic Information, and Privacy — Selling Personal Information, 392 New Eng. J. Med. 937 (2025).

Sara Gerke & David A. Simon, New Case Law and Liability Risks for Manufacturers of Medical AI, 388 Science 1138 (2025).

Boris Babic & Sara Gerke, Notice and Explanation in Healthcare AI: Lessons from California’s Proposition 65 Experience, 25 Am. J. Bioethics 115 (2025).

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Courses

Courses

Health Law
Food and Drug Law
Torts

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