Dr Melissa McCradden

Dr. Melissa McCradden is the Artificial Intelligence Director and Deputy Research Director with the Women's and Children's Health Network (WCHN). She is a Deputy Director and The Hospital Research Foundation (THRF) Group Fellow at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (University of Adelaide). She holds an Adjunct Scientist appointment with the SickKids Research Institute and serves as a member of the SickKids Research Ethics Board in Toronto, Canada. Dr McCradden is an Associate Editor for the journal Research Ethics and is on the Advisory Board for the journal Patterns. She is a member of the World Health Organisation(WHO)/ITU's Focus Group on Clinical Evaluation of AI for Health (FG-AI4H).Dr. McCradden's expertise is in the development of ethical frameworks derived from clinical and technical knowledge grounded in policy, law, and moral theory. She has published on algorithmic bias, responsible clinical evaluation of healthcare machine learning, and clinical integration of AI in journals such as Nature Medicine, JAMA, Lancet Digital Health, JAMIA, and NEJM-AI. Dr. McCradden participates in a plethora of international reporting guideline initiatives including CONSORT and SPIRIT AI (clinical trials), DECIDE-AI (first-in-human trials) and many other international efforts in enhancing regulatory science for health AI. She is listed among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics and was a Top 40 Under 40 Finalist by InDaily SA (2025).Dr. McCradden holds a PhD in Neuroscience from McMaster University, a Master of Health Sciences in Bioethics from the University of Toronto, and was the inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow in AI Ethics at SickKids and Vector Institute, jointly trained in computer science and bioethics.