Sara Huston Katsanis is a Research Assistant Professor at Northwestern University and Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. She directs the Genetics and Justice Laboratory at Lurie, which is a “dry” academic laboratory focused on policy and ethics research on DNA testing applications in humanitarian efforts, medicine, and law enforcement. She researches policy challenges for applying scientific technologies to human identification in human rights contexts, such as human trafficking, migration, and adoption fraud.

Katsanis received an MS in Medical Genetics in the UK in 1997. From 1998 to 2000, she worked as a DNA Analyst at the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office. From 2002, she managed the Johns Hopkins DNA Diagnostic Laboratory in Baltimore and in 2006 transitioned to working in genetics policy research, starting with the Genetics & Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins in Washington, DC. From 2009 to 2019 Katsanis was faculty at Duke University and transitioned in 2019 to Chicago, to Northwestern and Lurie Children’s.