Natalie E. Ram, JD
Professor of Law
Francis King Carey School of Law
Professor Natalie Ram is a leading scholar on the intersection of genetic privacy and the law whose research on genetic privacy, biospecimen use, and government access to sensitive biological data has fundamentally advanced understanding in legal and scientific communities and reshaped national conversations.
She is the author of more than 20 book chapters and law review articles, 17 peer-reviewed publications, and 23 shorter scholarly pieces. Examples of her work include “America’s Hidden National DNA Database” (Texas Law Review, 2022) and “Legal and Ethical Issues of Wastewater SARS-CoV-2 Monitoring for COVID-19 Surveillance” (Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 2020). In 2026, Ram was recognized by the Privacy Law Scholars Conference with the Ian Kerr Best Paper Award for her work, “Surveilling the Sewer.”
Ram has received multiple external grants to support her research, including two grants from The Greenwall Foundation for her work on forensic biobanking as a faculty scholar in bioethics (2018-2021) and as a fellow in bioethics and health policy (2009-2010).
She was a member of the Maryland Genetic Genealogy Working Group, which helped inform first-in-the-nation legislation regulating law enforcement use of consumer genetic data, and continues to serve on the Maryland Forensic Genetic Genealogical DNA Analysis and Search Panel, which was created under that legislation. Her research on newborn screening has also informed policy changes in multiple states.
Ram, who came to Maryland Carey Law in 2019, teaches advanced bioethics courses in the Law and Health Care Program. She is also adjunct faculty with the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University.
Ram is an elected member of the American Law Institute. She also holds positions on numerous boards and committees, including the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Before joining Maryland Carey Law, she clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court. She then worked at Morrison & Foerster in Washington, D.C.
Ram earned her JD from Yale Law School and a bachelor’s degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University.
