Introducing the 2025 Roots of Progress Institute Fellows
We’re thrilled to introduce our 2025 Blog-Build Intensive Fellows!
We’re thrilled to introduce the third cohort of Blog-Build Intensive Fellows!
This year’s fellows are a group of 31 progress writers selected from a pool of over 400 impressive applicants. In our third year of the program, the quality of applicants has yet again gone up. Over ¼ of applicants merited a first round interview, and we had 51 finalists. Given the incredible talent of our finalists we couldn’t limit ourselves to a class of just 25 fellows, and ultimately selected 31 fellows for this year’s program.
They are scientists, urbanists, economists, lawyers, farmers, professors, policy-makers, builders, entrepreneurs and storytellers. They hail from the U.S., Canada, Ireland, the U.K., and Germany; they speak English, French, Mandarin, Farsi, Hindi, Korean, German, and Spanish. And they’ll be writing about medical history, apprenticeship programs, precision agriculture, American reindustrialization, competition with China, trains and transportation, Irish progress, aging research, biotechnology, the moral imperative of progress and so much more.
We’re thrilled to have once again assembled a an outstanding group of progress writers and thinkers:
Steven Adler is a former OpenAI safety researcher. He has an M.S. in Machine Learning and Computer Science from Georgia Tech. He is writing about AI safety and the post-AGI Future. You can subscribe to his work on his Substack, Making AI Go Better.
Andrew Burleson is one of the co-founders and board chair of Strong Towns. For his day job he is a head of engineering. He is writing about housing, urbanism, technology and how to bring dynamism back to our cities. You can subscribe to his work on his Substack, The Post-Suburban Future.
Byron Cohen is a pandemic preparedness policy practitioner with a Ph.D. in public health from Harvard. He previously served as an advisor to the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness. He is writing about public health, pandemic preparedness and biotechnology. You can subscribe to his work on his Substack, Raising Health.
Tim Durham is an agriculturalist and professor of crop science at Ferrum College. He has experience in crop biosecurity and his family operates a 30-acre farm on Long Island. He is writing about agriculture, biotechnology and pesticides. You can subscribe to his work on his Substack.
Sam Enright is the Innovation Policy Lead at Progress Ireland. He has an M.A. in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh, and writes about metascience, Irish history and policy. He has received two Emergent Ventures grants from the Mercatus Center. You can subscribe to his work on the Substack, The Fitzwilliam.
Étienne Fortier-Dubois is a software engineer and AI evaluations specialist. His work has been published in Works in Progress and Asterisk. He is interested in the historical, cultural, and evolutionary aspects of technological progress and he is working on creating an interactive historical tech tree. You can read his work on his Substack, Hopeful Monsters.
Lesley Gao is a startup founder and operator with experience in China’s manufacturing and supply chain systems. She is writing about U.S. industrial renewal and Chinese industrial capabilities. She is fluent in Chinese. You can read her work on her Substack, Shear Force.
Michael Hill was the Asia Pacific policy advisor at the U.K. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero until recently. He will soon be starting a new policy research role at Britain Remade, a pro-progress, growth and abundance campaign organisation. He is writing about development economics for the U.K. You can read his work on his Substack, Gruntled Civil Servant.
Heidi Huang is a research scientist in Feng Zhang’s lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, exploring how sleep protects people from systemic stress. She is writing about health, longevity and biotech. You can read her work on her Substack.
Hiya Jain is a recent graduate from Barnard College, Columbia University with a double major in History and Neuroscience. She is also a Mercatus Center Emergent Ventures grantee. She is writing about metascience, biology and the history of science. You can read her work on her Substack, Mundane Beauty.
Adam Kroetsch spent over a decade at the FDA. He has also held roles in health policy research and at think tanks. He is writing about biomedical research, clinical trials and health policy. He is interested in clinical evidence: how we generate it, learn from it, and apply it to improve health. You can read his work on his Substack, Evolving Evidence.
Alex Kustov is a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina. He is also the author of a new book, In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular. He is writing about immigration policy, politics and (de)population. You can read his work on his Substack.
Allison Lehman was raised on a generational fruit farm that her family still operates. She has an M.S. in precision agriculture and has worked as an extension outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is writing about agriculture and intergenerational knowledge transfer. You can read her work on her Substack, Feast of Assumption.
Anton Leicht is an AI policy researcher and strategist. He has worked as a parliamentary and government advisor on tech and economic policy in Germany, and as a lobbyist and consultant in Brussels and Berlin. He is currently finishing a Ph.D. in philosophy. You can read his work on his Substack, Threading the Needle.
Laura Mazer is a board-certified surgeon who transitioned to a career as a full-time educator and curriculum developer. She is writing about history and medical science, exploring how new knowledge emerges and how old knowledge is improved. You can read her work on her Substack, The Anatomists.
Pouya Nikmand is a writer and freedom advocate who escaped Iran at eighteen, beginning an arduous seven-year journey to freedom in the Western World. Pouya is interested in the moral imperative of progress, civilization and injustice. He is writing about his personal experiences. You can read his work on his Substack, Outliving Iran.
Sean O’Neill McPartlin is the co-founder and Director of Housing Policy at Progress Ireland. He has volunteered with OneDaySooner, and published his writing in the British Medical Journal and Telegraph. He is writing about housing and infrastructure development, public policy, and the philosophy of progress. You can read his work on the Progress Ireland Substack.
Ariel Patton is a director of product at InnerPlant, a company using bioengineering to allow plants to alert farmers of stressors in their fields. She is interested in helping farmers manage their operations more profitably and sustainably. You can read her work on her Substack, Topsoil.
Rhishi Pethe has spent his career using technology to solve problems across food and agriculture systems around the world. He is writing about agriculture, food systems, and sustainability. You can read his work on his newsletter, Software is Feeding the World.
Venkatesh Ranjan is a molecular biophysicist with an interdisciplinary background in solid-state physics and microfluidics. He is interested in writing about the biographies of ideas, space exploration as a path to resource abundance, and humanity’s ongoing quest to answer science’s deepest questions. You can read his work on his Substack, Why You Should Read.
Abby ShalekBriski is a PhD candidate in agricultural economics. She grew up in rural Idaho and has worked closely with producers. She is interested in why some farmers adopt new technologies and others don’t. She is writing about food systems, rural institutions, and how to design systems of progress that account for the realities of rural life and food production.
Ibis Slade is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, studying philosophy and culture. He is interested in nineteenth-century American History. He is writing about philosophies of progress, the history of progress and cultural progress. You can read his work on his Substack, History’s Open Secrets.
Colleen Smith is an emergency medicine doctor with experience in medical simulation and education. She has been involved in administration and curriculum development for physician training programs and medical student education. She is writing about freedom in healthcare. You can read her work on her Substack.
Benedict Springbett is studying to be a lawyer in the U.K. He is interested in urbanism, state capacity, and the state as an instrument of progress and abundance. He has also written extensively about railways. You can read his work on his Substack.
Smrithi Sunil is a research scientist studying brain health using multimodal imaging. Her writing has appeared in Asimov. She is interested in understanding the structures, environments, and individuals that shape scientific discovery. You can read her work on her Substack, Engineering Discovery.
Karthik Tapadalli is completing an economics PhD at UC Berkeley. He is interested in the intersection of progress and development, and technology policy in developing countries. His writing has appeared in Asterisk. You can read his work on his Substack, Beyond Imitation.
Deric Tilson is an energy economist working on nuclear commercialization and innovation at the Breakthrough Institute. He is writing about energy, eco-modernism, nature and technological progress. You can read his work on his Substack, Returns to Scale.
Nehal Udyavar is a software engineer with a passion for biology. He runs a website for interactive STEM explainers. He is writing about cell and gene therapy, synthetic biology, and biotextiles. His work has appeared in Asimov. You can read his work on his Substack, Nehal’s Learnings.
Elizabeth Van Nostrand is a professional researcher who “wants to major in everything.” She is interested in writing about the “boring part” of Bell Labs, AI research tools, and the development of the theory of natural selection. She is especially focused on metascience and luck-based medicine. You can read her work on her blog, Aceso Under Glass.
Kelly Vedi is a senior director of policy at The College Board. She is writing about apprenticeship, with a focus on employers’ willingness to train, teenagers’ drive to jump into the real work, and the policy levers needed to unleash the growth of apprenticeship. You can read her work on her Substack, Avocational.
Afra Wang has a wealth of experience in Silicon Valley across AI, media, and crypto. She is writing about AI narratives, progress studies, and cultural stories shaping China and Silicon Valley. She is interested in examining how China serves as both a challenge and a mirror for Western technology communities. You can read her work on her Substack, Concurrent.