About Tessa Alexanian
- biotechno-optimist with a side of "are we the baddies"
- former professional robot whisperer
- here for both "donate 10%" and "aaa catastrophic risks" effective altruism
- trained tall ship rigging officer
- 3-time bay area pun-off champion
- over-the-top theme party hostess
I swore an oath upon honor and cold iron before departing Waterloo, Ontario to become an engineer at Zymergen in Emeryville, California, where I spent four years attempting to persuade robots to do biology experiments. I realized I was spending an awful lot of my spare time reading papers about biosecurity, so now I'm working on preventing pandemics and generally steering towards nice futures for biotechnology, most recently as part of IBBIS's founding team.
Professional bio: Tessa Alexanian is the Technical Lead for the Common Mechanism, an open-source baseline for nucleic acid synthesis screening developed by the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS). Her previous work has focused on modular lab automation, assessing dual-use risks in synthetic biology projects, bioweapons convention compliance, and creating cultures of responsibility. Tessa wrangled robots to do bioengineering for four years at Zymergen, served for two years at the iGEM Competition’s Safety and Security officer, and has collaborated with organizations including Coefficient Giving and RAND. She was a 2023 CSR Ending Bioweapons Fellow, a 2022 ELBI fellow and 2020 Foresight Fellow.
I also have a resumé, if you're into that sort of thing.
I look like this:
