Daniel Greene, PH.D.
Biosecurity Researcher and Behavioral Scientist
Stanford, CA
I use behavioral science to study the societal risks and potential of the life sciences.
Hi, I'm Daniel. I am a postdoctoral researcher and fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where I work with Dr. Megan Palmer to study the societal risks and potential of the life sciences. I use a combination of data science, survey research, policy analysis, and qualitative methods to help us understand our collective options for regulating life-science research. I am a 2022 Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity (ELBI) Fellow.
Previously, I was a behavioral scientist at the Project for Education Research That Scales, where I worked on the Engagement Project - a professional development program to help teachers make their classrooms more engaging, supportive, and meaningful for all students. I also contributed to an R library of data-analysis tools called Gymnast.
I completed a Ph.D. in Education at Stanford in 2018 under Prof. Carol Dweck. In my dissertation, I measured and influenced two novel "employment mindsets" that contribute to adults' motivation to seek out job-skill training.
In my spare time I'm part of the Effective Altruism community, where I explore ways that social science can help address humanity's most pressing problems. I'm currently mentoring three Stanford undergraduates through the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative, and I'm a co-organizer of a biosecurity discussion group called East Bay Biosecurity. I also occasionally blog on Medium.
What's on my desk right now.
Promoting proactive risk monitoring in the life sciences
Current biosafety and biosecurity rules often can’t effectively constrain life scientists who don’t want to follow them, and new risks are arising faster than rules can be created. How do we motivate life scientists to proactively monitor the risks of their work without the tool of institutional rules?
In collaboration with Megan Palmer, Rosanna Guadagno, and David Relman, I am conducting surveys and interviews to understand and influence the subjective meanings and attitudes that life scientists hold around biorisk mitigation. The results of this research will inform messaging, training, and onboarding programs to contribute to a culture of responsibility in the life sciences.
If dual-use risk management practices in the life sciences were collected and shared more widely, the field as a whole could learn how to assess risk more effectively and adopt stronger collective norms of risk management. How do we encourage influential stakeholders in the life sciences to adopt and share dual-use risk management practices?
In collaboration with colleagues at Stanford University and the Nuclear Threat Initiative's Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction Initiative, I am interviewing key international stakeholders in the life sciences (funders, researchers, and publishers) about their current dual-use risk assessment practices, collecting case-studies of best practices, and documenting barriers to adoption. The results of this research will be published as a collection of publicly-available resources.
Investigating the security mindset
Many sectors of the economy need a more security-aware workforce, including the life sciences and IT. One core security practice is the habit of identifying security flaws in the systems around you (sometimes called the "security mindset"). But existing discussions of the security mindset often characterize it as mysterious and unteachable (e.g. Schneier, 2008). How do we promote security mindsets at scale?
In collaboration with colleagues at Stanford and the University of Maastricht, I am interviewing security experts and laypeople about their beliefs and attitudes regarding a range of security topics. I hypothesize that the security mindset can be understood and promoted using concepts and tools from behavioral science. The results of this research will be used to more accurately measure security mindsets in employment settings, and to create educational activities that can promote security mindsets.
Center for International Security and Cooperation
2019 - present
Postdoctoral Researcher in Biosecurity & Project Fellow
Supervisors: Megan Palmer and David Relman
Project for Education Research That Scales
2013 - 2019
Data Associate and Program Manager
Lytics Lab
2013 - 2015
Doctoral Researcher
Transformative Learning Technologies Lab
2010 - 2012
Doctoral Researcher
Stanford University
2010 - 2018
Ph.D. in Education
Minor in Computer Science
Certificate in Computational Social Science
Advisor: Carol Dweck
Rutgers University
2006 - 2010
B.A. in Cognitive Science, Honors
Phi Beta Kappa
You can download my CV here.
Selected publications:
Greene, Daniel. ‘Employment Mindsets for Promoting Job-Skill Training.’ Doctoral dissertation (2018).
Yeager, David, Carissa Romero, Dave Paunesku, Christopher Hulleman, Barbara Schneider, Cintia Hinojosa, Hae Yeon Lee,
Joseph O'Brien, Kate Flint, Alice Roberts, Jill Trott, Daniel Greene, Gregory F. Walton, and Carol Dweck. ‘Using Design Thinking to Make Psychological Interventions Ready for Scaling: The Case of the Growth Mindset During the Transition to High School.’ Journal of Experimental Psychology (2015).
Greene, Daniel, and Dave Paunesku. 'Changing Mindsets to Raise Achievement: The Stanford University Project for Education Research That Scales.' Society for Personality and Social Psychology Blog (2014).
Invited talks:
Media coverage and popular writing from my earlier work: