Dr. Mahlet Mesfin joined AAAS in May 2017 as the Deputy Director of the Center for Science Diplomacy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She also serves as executive editor of the open-access policy journal Science & Diplomacy.
Prior to AAAS, Mahlet was the Assistant Director for International Science and Technology (S&T) at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). She led the strategic planning, coordination, and execution of the S&T-focused bilateral and multilateral engagements under the responsibility of the President’s Science Advisor, strengthened international engagements across OSTP, and championed science and technology as an element of the broader U.S. government’s foreign policy agenda. Mahlet entered the government through the AAAS S&T Policy Fellowship program, where she worked at the Basic Research Office at the U.S. Department of Defense and worked on the coordination and strategy of international S&T engagement across the Department. She was also a policy fellow with the Committee for Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Engineering.
Mahlet received a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a M.S.E. in biomedical engineering and B.S.E. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.