Fellow, Ending Bioweapons Program
Tessa Alexanian is trying to steer towards nice futures for biotechnology. After finishing her engineering degree, she spent four years wrangling robots to do biological engineering at Zymergen, followed by two years serving as the iGEM Competition’s Safety and Security officer. Her work has focused on modular laboratory automation, developing cultures of responsibility in the life sciences, and assessing dual-use risks from synthetic biology. Tessa has run workshops on Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) verification, responsible use of synthetic biology beyond containment, and collaborative biosecurity. She was a 2022 ELBI fellow, the 2020 Foresight Fellow in Responsible Biotechnology, and a 2017 iGEM delegate to the BWC.
