Dr. Sulmasy is a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and holds a joint appointment at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics. He is the inaugural Andre Hellegers Professor of Biomedical Ethics, with co-appointments in the Departments of Philosophy and Medicine at Georgetown. He continues to practice medicine part-time as a member of the Georgetown University faculty practice.

Previously, he was at the University of Chicago as the Kilbride-Clinton Professor of Medicine and Ethics in the Department of Medicine and Divinity School, Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics in the Department of Medicine, and Director of the Program on Medicine and Religion. Additionally, he has held faculty positions at Georgetown University and New York Medical College. He received his AB and MD degrees from Cornell University, com­pleted his residency, chief residency, and post-doctoral fellowship in General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and holds a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University. He has served on numerous governmental advisory committees, and was appointed to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues by President Obama in 2010.

His research interests encompass both theoretical and empirical investigations of the ethics of end-of-life decision-making, ethics education, and spirituality in medicine. He is the author or editor of six books: The Healer's Calling (1997), Methods in Medical Ethics (2001; 2nd ed. 2010), The Rebirth of the Clinic (2006), A Balm for Gilead (2006), Safe Passage: A Global Spiritual Sourcebook for Care at the End of Life (2013), and Francis the Leper: Faith, Medicine, Theology, and Science (2014). He also serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.