My interests span the governance and ethics of emerging (bio)technology, from large-scale ML models and synthetic media to biometric surveillance tools and gene drives.

Presently, I am a Senior Policy Advisor for Biotechnology at the U.S. AI Safety Institute and a Visiting Scholar at the Gray Lab within the Johns Hopkins Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Before that, I was a Biosecurity Fellow at Rosetta Commons, a consortium leading the development of biomolecular design software, a Policy Researcher at the Open Molecular Software Foundation, a Fellow at the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, and an ELBI Fellow.

I received an MSc in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University through the Schwarzman Scholars program and a BA in Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology from Whitman College.

My past employment includes AI policy research at The Future Society, a translational cancer therapeutics internship at the biotech SeaGen, working as an English instructor in Almaty, Kazakhstan through Princeton in Asia, and researching North Korea's nuclear development with the former Economic Advisor to the President of Kazakhstan. I also had a brief but unforgettable foray into acting in Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella with an English-speaking community theater while living in Almaty. I speak English (native), Russian (advanced), and a bit of Mandarin Chinese (pre-intermediate).

Please contact me[aт]samuelmcurtis[doт]com for my résumé/CV and all other matters.