AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Biography

Melanie Leitner, Ph.D., is Program Officer, JG Perpich. Previously, she was Program Director for FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions. Prior to that, she was the Director of the Educational Programs Department at the Society for Neuroscience. Dr. Leitner came to DC in 2001 as a AAAS-sponsored Congressional Science Policy Fellow and spent the year working for Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) on a variety of policy issues including stem cells and cloning, the Farm Bill, and the dietary supplement ephedra. She then spent a year as a Diplomacy Fellow working at the US Agency for International Development focusing on cooperative scientific research within the Middle East. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi and magna cum laude from Brown University in 1993 with a Sc.B. in neuroscience and she was awarded a Predoctoral Fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for her graduate work. Dr. Leitner received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis.