Jason Rao, Ph.D.

Senior Policy Advisor for Global Science Engagement
Office of Science and Technology Policy

Dr. Jason Rao is currently the Senior Policy Advisor for Global Science Engagement in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where his responsibilities include President Obama’s Global Engagement initiative, aimed at renewing science and technology partnerships to meet grand challenges around the globe.

From 2002 to 2009, Dr. Rao served in the U.S. Department State Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, working on a range of foreign assistance initiatives and global threat reduction programs to enhance global health security and scientific cooperation. During that time Dr. Rao launched the BioIndustry Initiative in the former Soviet Union, bringing Western Industry to new public-private partnerships across Eurasia to accelerate drug and vaccine development for emerging infectious diseases. Dr. Rao went on to pioneer the Biosecurity Engagement Program (BEP), leading the expansion of the next generation of Cooperative Threat Reduction programs across South and South East Asia as well as the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America.

In 2007, Dr. Rao launched BEP in Indonesia, establishing a cooperative threat reduction program through Embassy Jakarta for the first time, and went on to Pakistan to serve as the Advisor for Biological Security at U.S. Embassy Islamabad. Dr. Rao was instrumental in restarting the U.S.-Pakistan S&T Cooperative grants program, as well as breaking new ground on a range of health security initiatives through the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and prevention.

In 2009 Dr. Rao became a Brookings Legislative Fellow in the 111th Congress, working on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, contributing to a new Bill on international cooperation and WMD prevention.

Dr. Rao began his career in government as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Diplomacy Fellow in 2002; before coming to government, he worked as a scientist in the pharmaceutical industry and as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Rao holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and earned his bachelor’s degree in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of California at Santa Cruz.