Research Interests and Accomplishments

Michele Garfinkel is a policy analyst at the J. Craig Venter Institute. Her research focuses on identifying emerging societal concerns associated with new discoveries in genomics and crafting options for policy interventions. Her earlier work at Columbia University’s Center for Science, Policy, & Outcomes focused on health research policy. Prior to her appointment at Columbia, she was an assistant in the Scientific Freedom, Responsibility & Law Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where she worked primarily on policy issues related to stem cell research. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where she conducted research on genetic and developmental regulation of the cell cycle in Drosophila melanogaster.

Dr. Garfinkel received her A.B. in Genetics from the University of California, Berkeley and her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Washington, Seattle, where she completed a dissertation on translational regulation of messenger RNAs in eukaryotic cells during influenza virus infection. She also holds an M.A. in Science, Technology, and Public Policy from the George Washington University, where she was a Shapiro Fellow in International Affairs.

Select Publications

Reports

Synthetic Genomics | Options for Governance, with D. Endy, G.L. Epstein, and R.M. Friedman. The J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville MD, 2008.

Stem Cell Research and Applications: Monitoring the Frontiers of Biomedical Research, with A. Chapman and M. Frankel. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC, 1999.

Articles