Dr. Kelly Seagraves is the Vice President for National Security and International Affairs at BIO. Prior to joining BIO, Dr. Seagraves was the Senior Advisor for Biotechnology Policy in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology, where she led the coordination of biotechnology policy across the State Department. She was also a secretariat member of the National Bioeconomy Board. In these roles, her priority was promoting the responsible development and use of emerging biotechnologies, by facilitating international cooperation that supports the U.S. and global bioeconomies and protecting against misuse of technologies where necessary.

Prior to joining the Special Envoy’s Office, Dr. Seagraves was a global emerging technologies analyst, also at the U.S. Department of State, where her portfolio included advanced computing, artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, and biotechnologies. Dr. Seagraves transitioned to the Department of State after spending a decade as an academic neuroscientist. Her laboratory research focused on how the brain controls social interactions. Most recently, she was a CV Starr Fellow at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and prior to that, she received her B.A. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her PhD in Zoology from the University of Cambridge.