• About the ICJ
  • Board of Overseers
  • Staff
  • Contact Us
• Research Agenda
• Publications
• Research Centers
  • Center for Health and Safety in the Workplace
  • Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy
  • Kauffman-RAND Institute for Entrepreneurship Public Policy
  • RAND Center for Corporate Ethics and Governance

Staff Biographies

Elisa Eiseman

	Senior Natural Scientist Washington Office RAND Publications List	Education Ph.D., Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1989
	Fields Issues of research involving human tissues; Protection of human research participants; Ethics concerning new biomedical technologies	Policy Areas Bioethics, Biotechnology, Genetics

Recent Projects

• Human Biospecimen Database: A Database of Repositories that Collect, Store, and Distribute Human Biospecimens for Research Use
• Biospecimen Research Database: Assessing the Effects of Preanalytical Variables on Molecular Research
• Optimizing US Armed Forces Bio/Serosurveillance for Influenza and Other Strategic Health Threats: Improvement Strategies for the Department of Defense Serum Repository

Previous/Other Positions

• Senior Scientist, Cell Therapeutics, Inc
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute
• Postdoctoral Fellow, National Institute of Health, National Cancer Institute

Biography Summary

Elisa Eiseman (Ph.D., Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1989) is a Senior Natural Scientist at the RAND Corporation. Her expertise is in genetics, cancer research, biotechnology, biomedicine, and bioethics. She has worked extensively on the issue of research involving human biospecimens. In 1999, she provided the first and only inventory of human biospecimens in the United States, and in 2003 established best practices for the collection, storage, and distribution of biospecimens for research purposes. More recently, she developed two Web-based, searchable databases on biospecimens—the first contains detailed information about repositories that collect, store, and distribute biospecimens for research use; the second contains information about the effects of pre- and post-acquisition variables on the quality of biospecimens. She also has led a number of projects dealing with the protection of human research participants, and the ethics of new biomedical technologies, including cloning and stem cells. In addition, Dr. Eiseman has conducted research on the federal research and development portfolio, global healthcare resource tracking, and preparedness for public health emergencies. She has also assisted federal agencies with program-level strategic planning and evaluation processes using logic modeling as a planning tool.

Dr. Eiseman was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Technology Policy Science and Engineering Fellow at the RAND Science and Technology Policy Institute from 1996 to 1998. Before coming to RAND, Dr. Eiseman was a senior scientist at Cell Therapeutics, Inc., a Seattle-based biotechnology company, where she was involved in cancer research and several aspects of drug development. Prior to that, she was employed with Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. Dr. Eiseman was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute.

View All ICJ Staff Bios