Rachel Petherbridge is a PhD student in Systems Biology at Harvard. She studied International Public Policy and Diplomacy at University College Cork as a 2020 Mitchell Scholar. Prior to that, she was a Biomedical Engineering major at Boston University where her accomplishments in synthetic biology earned her a Goldwater Scholarship and selection as a Harvard Amgen Scholar. She served as Vice President of the BU Undergraduate Women in Science and Engineering group and was a Student Leader for STEM Pathways where she helped expand STEM opportunities for students in Boston. She was also a member of BU’s iGEM team, an international competition for students in synthetic biology, which won Gold (2016) and Silver (2018) at the Jamboree. Rachel began college with two passions: science and policy. She combined them by holding leadership roles in the BU Model UN conferences and working as a staff writer for the BU International Relations Review, where she wrote on topics such as the Zika virus and climate change.