Bridget Queenan

Executive Director

Bridget Queenan received an A.B. in Biochemistry from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Georgetown University. She won the Ruth Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Health, the Best Ph.D. in the Sciences from Georgetown University, and the Distinguished Science of Learning Postdoctoral Fellowship from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Dr. Queenan’s interests are in building (a) transdisciplinary research programs that tackle real-world challenges and (b) vibrant research communities that support young people pursuing STEM careers. Her own love of research began at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and flourished reading journal articles along the Seine during her time at the Institut Pasteur. She has since held academic appointments across cell biology, neuroscience, mechanical engineering, materials engineering, chemistry, and systems biology, and was the first Research Director for Biological Engineering, Science & Technology at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her projects have been supported by the NIH, NSF, XPrize, American Diabetes Association, and the Simons, Hearst, Heising-Simons, Simons-Moore, and Kavli Foundations. In a past life, she had an NYC corner office at Thieme Medical Publishers where she developed the best-selling anatomy atlas in the world. Since 2019, she has been the Executive Director of Research for Quantitative & Synthetic Biology at Harvard.