Dr. Kathryn Brink received her Ph.D. in Systems, Synthetic, and Physical Biology from Rice University in 2021. During her Ph.D., she studied bacterial two-component systems (TCSs), signal transduction pathways that bacteria use to sense and respond to changes in their environment. TCSs play important roles in host-pathogen interactions and can be engineered for medical and environmental biosensing applications. She developed engineering and screening approaches to discover and characterize the stimuli that activate these pathways.

Dr. Brink’s research focuses on risk management and assessment in biological science and engineering, with the goals of improving the governance of biological research and reducing the risk of its misuse. She investigates factors associated with attention to risk among scientists and engineers, and she studies and prototypes risk assessment processes for biological research projects.