Francis Crawley

Francis P. Crawley is a philosopher specialized in research ethics, integrity, and methodology, and data/AI ethics & law. He is the Executive Director of the Good Clinical Practice Alliance – Europe (GCPA) in Brussels, Belgium. He is the founder and Director of the Strategic Initiative for Developing Capacity in Ethical Review (SIDCER). Currently he is He is Co-chairman of the EOSC Future / RDA Artificial Intelligence and Data Visitation Working Group & EOSC Future / RDA Ambassador for Ethics & Law. He also chairs the International Data Policy Committee of the International Committee on Data (CODATA), International Science Council (ISC). He is also a member of the FAIRsharing Community Curation Programme at FAIRsharing.org. He coordinated the GCPA-SIDCER European Fellowship in Research Ethics (EFRE). He is the past Secretary General and Ethics Officer at the European Forum for Good Clinical Practice, where he also chaired for more than 10 years the Ethics Working Party. He sits on the Pool of Patients at the European Commission's Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). He is a member of the Member of the Data Stewardship Working Group and the Handbook Writing Group with Virus Outbreak Data Network (VODAN) GO-FAIR, a Member of the Ethics Working Group with the Covid-19 Clinical Research Coalition, and a Member of the Legal and Ethics Working Group and the Community Participation Working Group at the Research Data Alliance (RDA). He chaired the methodologies sub-group of the Real Word Data Working Group at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine, Royal Colleges of Physicians. He has acted as an author or expert for many of the leading international and European research ethics and GCP guidelines, as well as for several guidelines in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. He was for 15 years the Chairman of the Ethical Review Committee of the International Network for Cancer Treatment and Research (INCTR); a member of the INCTR Tissues Committee; and for over 20 years a member of the Ethics Committee of the European Organization for Research & Treatment of Cancer; Consultant to the Peking University Institutional Review Board; and a member of the Steering Committee of the Chinese Ethics Committee of Registering Clinical Trials (ChECRCT). He has been a member of the joint EMVI-AMVTN Ethical Review Committee; a Permanent Liaison Officer to the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO; and a Contact Officer for CIOMS. In 2006 he was Visiting Expert in Research Ethics at the Ministry of Health, Singapore. He was the committee chairman and principal author of the WHO guidelines on ethics committees and data monitoring committees; and he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the World Health Organization’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). He also served for four years on the UNAIDS Ethical Review Committee and co-authored their guideline on vaccines. He is a co-founder and past Steering Committee Member of the Global Forum for Bioethics in Research; a past member of the Committee of Interested Parties of the Centre for the Management of Intellectual Property in Health Research & Development; a past member of the European Science Foundation’s Education Working Group, and a past member of the WHO GCP Handbook drafting committee. In addition, he was for over 20 yeats a member of the Ethics Working Group, European Academy of Paediatrics (UEMS-EAP); and an investigator in several European Commission projects, including ‘The Development of European Standards on Confidentiality and Privacy in Healthcare among Vulnerable Patient Populations’, ‘Ethical Function in Hospital Ethics Committees’, & ‘Ethical Considerations in Clinical Trial Collaboration with Developing Countries’, ‘European Network for Expertise for Rare Paediatric Neurological Disorders (nEUroped)’ and Relating Expectations and Needs to the Participation and Empowerment of Children in Clinical Trials (RESPECT). He is also a member of past Vice-Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals. He was the Co-facilitator for the Ethics Roundtable at the Africa Centre for Health & Population Studies in South Africa where he taught a modular GCP course and where he was a member of a DSMB for an HIV vertical transmission study. He is also a member of several regional organizations for ethics in research in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He founded the AfroGuide Project: Developing Guidelines for Health Research in Africa, with the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union. He organized and facilitated the GCPA-SIDCER Webinar Series on ‘Preparedness Planning for Clinical Research During Public Health Emergencies (PREP)’. He has been an expert reviewer for European Commission, IMI, EDCTP, and NIH clinical research and health-related research proposals. He serves on several editorial boards for international journals.