Meet our 2025 Senior Fellows

The FAS Senior Fellows Program helps policy entrepreneurs capitalize on a unique policy window to advance innovative policy priorities that drive positive change. Our Senior Fellows serve as expert voices and resources on key issue areas, cultivate relationships and broker partnerships between FAS and key research, policy, and advocacy communities, provide subject matter expertise and guidance for FAS staff, participants in FAS policy accelerators and workshops, and much more. Our Senior Fellows will be collaborating with Georgetown University’s Tech & Society Digital Services Alumni Fellows on their projects. The Digital Services Alumni Fellowship is a program for mid-career civil servants to continue developing their skills as part of a critically important cadre of next generation tech and policy leaders. Learn more about our Senior Fellows, the Digital Services Alumni Fellows, and their work below

Meet the fellows
Senior Fellow
Quincy K. Brown
data-driven insights,
strategic partnerships
evidence-based research
Senior Fellow
Maryam Janani-Flores
durable innovation ecosystems,
economic development,
workforce development
Senior Fellow
Arjun Krishnaswami
federal energy policy,
energy permitting,
clean energy
senior fellow
Denice Ross
data policy,
open government,
democratizing data
Senior Fellow
Merici Vinton
public product development,
public service delivery,
open data
Fellow, Digital Services Alumni
Thushan Amarasiriwardena
Fellow, Digital Services Alumni
Luke Farrell
Public Interest Technology,
State Capacity,
Economic Mobility,
Crisis Response
Fellow, Digital Services Alumni
Faith Savaiano
STEM workforce,
STEM education,
government innovation,
government capacity,
civic technology
Fellow, Digital Services Alumni
Diego Núñez
federal energy policy,
energy permitting,
clean energy
Fellow, Digital Services Alumni
Meron Yohannes
Economic and Community Development,
Workforce Training,
Inclusive Program Design
publications
See all
Government Capacity
Blog
The Data We Take for Granted: Telling the Story of How Federal Data Benefits American Lives and Livelihoods

As the former U.S. Chief Data Scientist, I know first-hand how valuable and vulnerable our nation’s federal data assets are. Like many things in life, we’ve been taking our data for granted and will miss it terribly when it’s gone. 

06.20.25 | 6 min read
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FAS
Press release
Federation of American Scientists and Georgetown University Tech & Society Launch Fellowships for Former Federal Officials

New initiative brings nine experts with federal government experience to work with the FAS and Tech & Society’s Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation, the Knight-Georgetown Institute, and the Institute for Technology Law & Policy Wednesday, June 11, 2025—Today Georgetown University’s Tech & Society Initiative and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) announce two […]

06.11.25 | 9 min read
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Clean Energy
Blog
Updating the Clean Electricity Playbook: Learning Lessons from the 100% Clean Agenda

To fight the climate crises, we must do more than connect power plants to the grid: we need new policy frameworks and expanded coalitions to facilitate the rapid transformation of the electricity system.

06.05.25 | 6 min read
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Government Capacity
Blog
Bridging Innovation and Expertise: Connecting Federal Talent to America’s Tech Ecosystems

We’re launching an initiative to connect scientists, engineers, technologists, and other professionals who recently departed federal service with emerging innovation ecosystems across the country that need their expertise.

05.09.25 | 5 min read
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Government Capacity
Blog
Goodbye IRS Direct File, Hello Inefficiency

It takes the average person over 9 hours and costs $160 to file taxes each year. IRS Direct File meant it didn’t have to.

04.16.25 | 5 min read
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FAS
Press release
Federation of American Scientists Announces Arrival of our Inaugural Cohort of Senior Fellows to Advance Audacious Policy that Benefits Society

Fellows Brown, Janani Flores, Krishnaswami, Ross and Vinton will work on projects spanning government modernization, clean energy, workforce development, and economic resiliency

03.17.25 | 4 min read
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About the Senior Fellows

Quincy K. Brown served as Director of Space STEM and Workforce Policy on the National Space Council in the White House Office of the Vice President. She will design a participatory, strategic foresight process to identify solutions to the most pressing challenges we face in the evolving science and technology ecosystem. She will leverage data-driven insights, strategic partnerships, and evidence-based research to shape national policy, scale innovative initiatives, and cultivate cross-sector collaborations.

Maryam Janani Flores served as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Economic Development Administration at the Department of Commerce, where she oversaw policy, strategy, and operations for a $5 billion grant portfolio. She will focus on broad-based participation in innovation ecosystems by placing recently departed federal scientists, engineers, and technologists in innovation hubs nationwide to build inclusive, durable innovation ecosystems.

Arjun Krishnaswami served in the Biden-Harris Administration as the Senior Policy Advisor for Clean Energy Infrastructure in the White House. He will take lessons learned at the federal level to elicit adoption of clean technology at the state level, modernizing our nation’s energy grid so that communities across the country can benefit from the greater resiliency, lower costs, and cleaner air that follow from clean energy upgrades.

Denice Ross, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist and Deputy U.S. CTO, will prototype a Federal Data Use Case Repository for documenting and sharing how people across the nation use priority federal datasets from many agencies. Her project is a front-line effort to protect the continued flow of federal data.

Merici Vinton served as a Senior Advisor to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel and prior to that was an original architect of the Direct File service. She will focus on technology innovation to deliver public services in a post “digital services” era, making institutions more relevant and responsive.