Madeline Kuney

Madeline (she/her, 2022 Cohort) is a part-time student in the Biohazardous Threat Agents and Emerging Infectious Diseases program. She currently works at the Sabin Vaccine Institute as a Policy Associate. In this role Madeline is responsible for directing Sabin’s policy and advocacy engagement at the organizational level and also supports the policy objectives of various programmatic teams. Prior to joining Sabin, she served as an intern with the Pandemics and Emerging Threats team at the Office of Global Affairs within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Madeline graduated from Georgetown University in 2020 with a Bachelors of Science degree in the Biology of Global Health and a minor in Spanish. While at Georgetown, she worked as Foundations of Biology teaching assistant and as a research assistant for Dr. Shweta Bansal’s lab. Her research focused on the spatial dynamics of childhood immunization exemptions and flu vaccine access across the US. Apart from vaccines and emerging biological threats, Madeline’s interests include cooking, playing tennis and camping down in Virginia whenever possible.

Career/Academic Interests: Coming from a background in global health policy and advocacy, she is very interested in the intersection of biosecurity and bioethics. That is, how do we ensure that the policies and initiatives we put in place to protect people from pathogens also protect their human rights and distribute benefits equitably? In the future, she would like to gain more experience in the field of biosecurity and later continue her education with a bioethics program. Ultimately, she hopes to be in a position that allows her to advocate for ethical considerations to be built into the US strategy towards global biosecurity.

Hobbies: cooking, playing tennis, hiking, camping, & ceramics