Daniel Greene

About ME
I study the societal risks and potential of life-science research.

I am a member of the technical staff at the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund, a new nonprofit dedicated to supporting science-based conversations about the risks and governance of mirror life.

Previously I was a Senior Consultant at Deloitte, where I used a combination of data science, survey research, policy analysis, and qualitative methods to study governance options for life-science research. Before that, I was a Senior Analyst at Gryphon Scientific, a DC-based research consultancy, and a 2022 Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity (ELBI) Fellow. I was fortunate to work with my teammates on a number of projects, including an investigation of the size of the private sector in US human pathogen research, a summary of issues with global PPE access and quality, and a schema for estimating the public health benefits of life-science research.

Prior to my work at Gryphon I was a postdoctoral researcher and fellow under Dr. Megan Palmer and Prof. David Relman at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. My work focused on assessing and promoting proactive biorisk management practices among various stakeholders in the life sciences, including funders, publishers, academic institutions, and life scientists themselves. You can learn more about this work below.

Pre-2019 I worked in social psychology and applied education research, completing 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. At the same time I worked as a behavioral scientist at the Project for Education Research That Scales, where I co-developed Elevate - 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.

In my spare time I like to explore ways that social science can help address humanity's most pressing problems. I enjoy mentoring undergraduates through the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative and I'm a co-organizer of a biosecurity discussion group called East Bay Biosecurity. My writing has been featured in Time and I also occasionally blog on Medium. I live in Santa Cruz, California.
Past projects

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 colleagues at Stanford University, I conducted 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.
The Visibility Initiative for Responsible Science
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 and the Nuclear Threat Initiative's Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction Initiative, I interviewed 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 have been 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 interviewed 21 cybersecurity experts about their beliefs and attitudes regarding a range of security topics. The results of this research can be used to more accurately measure security mindsets in employment settings and to create educational activities to promote security mindsets.
Empirically benchmarking dual-use risk assessment
US government policy requires that institutions receiving federal funding assess some life-science research for dual-use concerns and recommend mitigation strategies as needed. However, there is little empirical research on how much different reviewers agree or disagree in their assessments. If reviewers cannot agree on risk assessments, or if the choice of mitigation strategies does not heavily depend on risk assessments, then the purpose of assessment becomes less clear. To what extent do independent reviewers agree about the potential dual-use risks of a given research project?

In collaboration with colleagues at Stanford and the iGEM Foundation, I recruited 18 experienced dual-use research reviewers and 49 synthetic biology students to complete a modified version of the US government’s Companion Guide for DURC (dual-use research of concern) Assessment. Participants provided detailed assessments of risks, benefits, and recommended risk management strategies for four real-world synthetic biology projects. Our forthcoming results have implications for dual-use reviewer training and risk management.
Education and work history

Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund
2024 - present
Member of Technical Staff
Deloitte
2024 - 2024
Senior Consultant
Gryphon Scientific
2022 - 2024
Senior Analyist - Biosafety, Biosecurity, and Emerging Technologies (BBET)
Supervisors: Mark Kazmierczak and Rocco Casagrande
Center for International Security and Cooperation
2019 - 2022
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
CV and Selected Publications
You can download my CV here.

Selected publications:

Greene, Daniel, Audrey Cerles, and Rocco Casagrande. “Characterizing the Private Sector in US Human Pathogen Research.” Health Security (2024).
Tensmeyer, Nicole, Elizabeth Crawford, Daniel Greene, and Mark J. Kazmierczak. "The Role of Technology Risk Assessment Frameworks in Research." SSRN (2023).

Schoenmakers, Koen, Daniel Greene, Sarah Stutterheim, Herbert Lin, and Megan Palmer. 'The security mindset: characteristics, development, and consequences.' Journal of Cybersecurity (2023).

Greene, Daniel, Kathryn Brink, Melissa Salm, Connor Hoffmann, Sam Weiss Evans, and Megan Palmer. 'The Biorisk Management Casebook: Insights into contemporary practices.' Stanford Digital Repository (2023).

Greene, Daniel, Megan Palmer, and David Relman. 'Motivating Proactive Biorisk Management'. Health Security (2023).

Evans, Sam Weiss, Daniel Greene, Connor Hoffmann, and Stefan Lunte. 'Stakeholder Engagement Workshop on the Implementation of the United States Government Policy for Institutional Oversight of Life Sciences Dual Use Research of Concern: Workshop Report.' SSRN (2021).

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 and Popular Writing
Invited talks:
2022-05-05: "Motivating Proactive Biorisk Management." ABSA Biosecurity Symposium, Minneapolis, MN.
2022-02-27: “Governing Biological Risks.” Stanford Existential Risk Initiative Conference, remote.
2022-02-26: “Dealing with Dual Use.” Stanford Existential Risk Initiative Conference, remote.
2021-03-21: "Motivating Proactive Risk Monitoring in the Life Sciences." Biosecurity working group, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University, remote.
2020-12-03: Panelist for “Rethinking Safety and Security in Synthetic Biology.” Biosecurity, Biosafety, and Bioethics conference, remote.
2020-12-01: “Engaging Life Scientists About Biological Risks.” Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford, CA.
2020-11-04: Untitled presentation. Association for Biosafety and Biosecurity, Tempe, AZ.
2020-02-22: "Measuring Cultures of Responsibility in the Life Sciences." Catalyst Biosecurity Summit, San Francisco, CA.
2020-01-28: "Cultures of Responsibility in the Life Sciences." Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA.

Popular writing:
2023-08-31: "The Danger of ‘Invisible’ Biolabs Across the U.S."
Get in Touch

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