David Perlman PhD, Medical Ethics, MS, Health Psychology

David is a veteran educator, scholar, and author in the areas of medical ethics, research regulation, and the use of technology in pedagogy. He has over 20 peer-reviewed publications and over 100 presentations on these topics (his full CV is here). In these areas, David has worked at a big four accounting firm as a consultant, an ethics educator at a major pharmaceutical company, an executive at a state department of health, and finally a visiting professor at the University of Sciences from 2009 to 2022.

After being placed in a new department at the University of Sciences in 2018, David shifted his scholarly research interests to the use of role playing games (RPGs) in psychology, especially how they apply to moral development and as potential therapeutic interventions for those with neurodevelopmental disabilities. As part of this career shift, he founded a not-for-profit program, GameOn! (www.gameonphilly.org), in 2019 and obtained a MS in Health Psychology in 2022. To gain first-hand knowledge of providing programs and services to neurodivergent people or those with developmental disabilities, he joined the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as a Fellow in the 2023-24 cohort of LEND (Leadership and Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities). At LEND, David serves as one of the Self-Advocates, as he identifies as neurodivergent, has several “invisible” disabilities (most notably mild hearing loss), and hopes to use his combined lived and scholarly experience to support and advocate for others. David is pleased to continue his new career in research to help manage and coordinate the activities of DBPNet. He lives in Bala Cynwyd, PA with his pediatric nurse practitioner wife and eleven year old daughter.

In terms of his geek cred, he has been involved in RPGs since the early 1980s, both as a player and a game master and has published a choose-your-own-adventure bioethics thriller for the Kindle platform. Currently, David also works as a Dungeon Master for Dungeons and Dragons organized play at Top Deck Games in Cherry Hill, NJ, in addition to running GameOn!.