Michael A. Fisher
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Michael A. Fisher

Senior Fellow
Science and Technology Policy Science Communication Synthetic Biology

Dr. Michael A. Fisher is a Senior Fellow with the Federation of American Scientists, working on a range of issues across the science and technology policy landscape. He is the Director of the Congressional Science Policy Initiative and contributes to the Day One Project. Mike also coordinated the FAS-organized COVID-19 Task Force and worked on the Ask a Scientist and Coronavirus Project teams.

Prior to joining FAS, Mike served as Field Director with the Welle for Congress campaign (2018, New Jersey Congressional District 4). With scientific training at Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School, UC Berkeley, and Princeton, Mike has developed technical expertise in infectious disease research, biofuels, synthetic biology, protein engineering, and molecular biology.

Mike’s graduate work with Professor Hecht at Princeton University is credited by the University of Texas at Austin’s Fraser Professor of Biochemistry Andy Ellington as establishing the field of synthetic systems biology.

In 2012 Mike was a Fellow in the inaugural Synthetic Biology Leadership Accelerator Program cohort and was an IGCC Public Policy and Biological Threats Training Program Fellow in 2008.

Mike also has experience in:

  • Informal education as a STEM Educator with the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ.
  • Public-private partnership creation as a co-founder of the UC Berkeley Postdoc Industry Exploration Program in 2010.
  • Community organizing.

Mike earned his B.S. in Biology from The College of New Jersey and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University.

Publications

118th Congress: Bioeconomy & Health Security
January 12, 2023
CHIPS and Science Highlights: Bioeconomy
August 10, 2022
Digital IDs for Securing Personal Information
August 18, 2021
Why and How Faculty Should Participate in U.S. Policy Making
August 17, 2021
Empowering Healthy Eating in America
August 11, 2021
More publications

Other Coverage

Why and How Scientists, Engineers, and Technologists Should Participate in U.S. Policy Making
Michael A. Fisher and Lindsay K. Milliken provide a detailed recipe for facilitating the use of science as a key element of the policy-making process. August 2021.
The Trypanosoma cruzi RNA-binding protein RBP42 is expressed in the cytoplasm throughout the life cycle of the parasite
Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative agent of Chagas disease, a debilitating and sometimes life-threatening condition for an estimated 20-30% of those infected. The T. cruzi parasite is migrating into the southern United States due in part to climate change.
An essential domain of an early-diverged RNA polymerase II functions to accurately decode a primitive chromatin landscape
Trypanosoma brucei, the causative agent of African Sleeping Sickness, survives by regulating gene expression predominantly at the RNA, rather than DNA, level. The T. brucei parasite threatens millions of people in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Change, exchange, and rearrange: protein engineering for the biotechnological production of fuels, pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals
Designing proteins is a powerful tool to integrate into the production of chemicals.
Enhancing Tolerance to Short-Chain Alcohols by Engineering the Escherichia coli AcrB Efflux Pump to Secrete the Non-native Substrate n-Butanol
We used protein engineering to increase the tolerance of a laboratory strain of E. coli to candidate biofuels.
Testing the waters: Postdoc committees can give insight into industry career paths
There is a disconnect between what graduate students and postdocs are trained for, and the careers they enter into. There should be opportunities for graduate students and postdocs to develop nonacademic skillsets.
De novo designed proteins from a library of artificial sequences function in Escherichia coli and enable cell growth
We found that designed, synthetic proteins can provide life-sustaining functions for a laboratory strain of E. coli.
Knowledge-Based Protein Design
Using fundamental principles that have been discovered about protein structure and stability to inform protein design can lead to productive design efforts.