Home / Fellows

The cohort · dossiers

The people who imagine the threat
and then put it down

Each fellow runs the whole loop: a scenario, a red-team, a countermeasure, a dispatch. Below — the demonstrated work. What they wrote, what they built, where they showed it.

Illustrative composites // The fellows on this page are representative profiles that show the shape and range of fellowship work. They are not real people. Deliverables are example countermeasures written to be constructive and non-hazardous. No operational threat detail appears anywhere on this site.
N7
Nadia Okafor
Writer × Wet-lab
BackgroundClinical microbiologist & short-fiction writer
Scenario"The Printer in the Garage"
Threat classUnscreened benchtop DNA synthesis
Countermeasuresequence-firewall — an open screening hook any synthesis tool can call before it prints
DEF CON Biohacking Village · Device Lab
R2
Rafael Sørensen
Bench × Red-team
BackgroundCold-chain logistics engineer turned bio-hobbyist
Scenario"Cold Chain"
Threat classVaccine supply-chain tampering
CountermeasureA $3 irreversible tamper-and-temperature indicator for last-mile vaccine vials
iGEM Responsibility · community-lab pilot
M4
Mei-Lin Zhao
Policy × Fiction
BackgroundScience-policy analyst & playwright
Scenario"Open Reading Frame"
Threat classMisuse of AI protein-design tools
CountermeasureA model-card & access-tiering template two open-model projects adopted as a starting point
Global Community Bio Summit · policy lab
T9
Tomás Herrera
Writer × Detection
BackgroundEnvironmental journalist & former water-quality tech
Scenario"Downstream"
Threat classWastewater as an early-warning blind spot
CountermeasureAn open pipeline for community wastewater dashboards from low-cost sampling
DEF CON Biohacking Village · talk track
A5
Amara Bello
Bench × Screening
BackgroundSynthetic-biology grad student & comics writer
Scenario"Loyalty Program"
Threat classData-broker genomic re-identification
CountermeasureA privacy-preserving matching demo — screen orders without exposing customer genomes
iGEM · privacy & security session
J1
Jonah Reyes
Red-team × Tabletop
BackgroundInfosec incident responder & sci-fi novelist
Scenario"Root of Trust"
Threat classLab automation & cloud-lab security
CountermeasureA threat-model & hardening checklist for remote cloud-lab ordering, plus a red-team tabletop kit
DEF CON Biohacking Village · CTF crossover

Demonstrated activities

The dispatch log

DEF CON · Biohacking Village

Live red-team: screen before you print

Fellows ran the sequence-firewall hook against a benign test harness on the Village floor, then walked vendors through wiring in a screening call. Hazardous inputs were simulated, never real.

Community Lab · BSL-1

Detection-assay build night

An open bench session turning a fictional biomarker scenario into a working, non-hazardous detection panel — documented as a protocol any safety-reviewed lab can reproduce.

iGEM · Responsibility

Dual-use review clinic

A recurring clinic where fellows help student teams pressure-test their projects for misuse and build a disclosure plan before they publish.

Global Community Bio Summit

Tabletop: the outbreak that was printed

A facilitated cold-open drill that drops players into hour one of a synthetic outbreak, then races them to the countermeasure — all scenario, no recipe.

Vendor · Disclosure

Responsible-disclosure walkthrough

Fellows brought a screening-gap finding to a synthesis vendor first, with remediation time, before any public dispatch. The disclosure trail is part of the deliverable.

Publication · Red Horizon

Story + fix, shipped together

Each finished project runs as a paired release: the gonzo dispatch for the public, the working defense for the field, the hazard burned for everyone.

Your name could be on the next dispatch.

We recruit across fiction, the bench, policy, and security. You don't need all four — you need one, and the nerve to learn the rest.