Sigrid Sterckx is a Professor of Ethics at the Department of Philosophy & Moral Sciences of Ghent University and a part-time Professor of Ethics at the Department of Philosophy & Moral Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She obtained an MA in Moral Sciences (1994) and a PhD in Moral Sciences (2000), at Ghent University. She lectures courses in theoretical and applied ethics as well as methods in ethics.

Her doctoral dissertation investigated the ethical justification of patents, with a focus on the nature and strength of arguments based on natural rights, distributive justice and utilitarianism. Her publications include the book Biotechnology, Patents and Morality (Ashgate, 1997 and reworked edition in 2000), numerous book chapters and articles in international legal and (bio)ethics journals on issues including ethical aspects of medical practices at the end of life, organ transplantation, the impact of patents on access to medicines and the patentability of genes, genetic diagnostic tests and human embryonic stem cells. Her next book (co-authored with Dr Julian Cockbain) will be on exclusions from patentability under the European Patent Convention (Cambridge University Press, to be published in 2012).

Sigrid supervises research projects on various (bio)ethical topics: ethical aspects of end-of-life practices (particularly terminal sedation); non-utilitarian arguments regarding the (non-)permissibility of human enhancement; ethical problems relating to the commodification of human body material (focussing especially on organ transfer, biobanking and patenting of human body material); and global environmental ethics with particular attention to climate ethics.
 
Sigrid serves on several advisory committees, including the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics. She also serves as an ethics advisor to various EU funded research projects.