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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 co-leads the Congressional Science Policy Initiative, coordinates the COVID-19 Rapid Response Task Force and is a member of its steering committee, and works 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

Other Coverage

A grassroots effort to fight misinformation during the pandemic (2020)

As COVID-19 spread, FAS, along with several partner organizations, worked together to create Ask a Scientist to equip the public with sound information about the pandemic. In this piece for Scientific American, our team tells the story of this effort.

The coronavirus is airborne. Keep saying it. | It’s a jarring message, and the right one. (2020)

Particularly indoors in poorly-ventilated spaces, we're at risk of airborne spread of COVID-19. And when communicating science, let's not lose the forest for the trees. In this opinion piece for Slate, I argue there is value in messaging “the coronavirus is airborne" to the public.

What does it mean to be alive? (2019)

Review of Philip Ball's book "How to Grow a Human" for Science.

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.