Aaron Levine

Aaron D. Levine is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech and a Guest Researcher in the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is also Co-Director for Engineering Workforce Development for the NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT) and leads ethics and policy research for the center. His research focuses on the intersection between public policy and bioethics. Much of his work has examined the development of stem cell science, particularly research using human embryonic stem cells, and the translation of novel cell therapies. He also writes extensively on the oversight of contentious areas of medicine, such as assisted reproductive technology. In 2012, he received a NSF CAREER award to examine the impact of ethical controversy on graduate science education and the development of scientific careers.  He is an elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and the Vice-Chair for Bioethics on the International Society for Cell Therapy’s Presidential Task Force on Unproven Cell Therapies. He is also a long-time member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Aaron has a long-standing interest in science communication and is the author of Cloning: A Beginner's Guide (Oneworld Publications, 2007), an accessible introduction to the science of cloning and embryonic stem cells and the ethical and policy controversies this science inspires. He is serving as an AAAS Leshner Leadership Institute Public Engagement Fellow for 2019-2020. You can follow Aaron on twitter at @aarondlevine

He completed his Ph.D. in Public Affairs at Princeton University, where his dissertation research examined the impact of public policy on the development of human embryonic stem cell science.  He also holds an M. Phil. from the University of Cambridge, where, as a Churchill Scholar, he studied computational biology at the Sanger Centre and developed algorithms to help analyze the human genome sequence, and a B.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar.