Brent Wells is the Senior Strategic Lead and a Program Officer in USAID's DDI/ITR/Research Division. He is the team lead for the LASER program and manages a number of activities across other Research Division programs. Brent came to USAID from academia as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow. Prior to USAID, Brent completed his PhD in developmental genetics at Columbia University and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at New York University.