Team Bio

Our interdisciplinary team from the Billion Oyster Project, Genspace, and the mGAMUT lab at Stony Brook University combines a wealth of expertise in environmental science, genomics, and software engineering. We are united by our deep commitment to engaging and educating local communities, fostering a greater understanding of ecosystem dynamics, and making scientific research accessible.

Sally Kong

Sally is a software engineer, artist, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. After studying computer science and robotics, she has built automation pipelines and artist tools for 3D animated feature films and games at Disney’s Blue Sky Studios, Netflix, and Rockstar Games. She has been an active member of Genspace since 2022 as part of the Engineered Matter Labs team, and is also a global teaching assistant for MIT Media Lab’s synthetic biology course, "How To Grow Almost Anything."

Jackie Lee Weissman

Jackie Lee “JL” Weissman (they/she) leads the Microbial Genomes And Metagenomes to Unravel Traits (mGAMUT) at Stony Brook University. Her research examines how microbes survive and thrive across diverse environments. She develops new tools to infer what microbes are doing and can do from DNA sequences captured directly from the environment (“metagenomes”), aiming to improve the representation of microbially-mediated biogeochemical cycles in global climate models. She believes everyone, with supportive mentorship, can become a highly-capable computational biologist, and loves to show students how a little coding can go a long way.

Previously, JL served as the inaugural Director for Proposal Development at the City College of New York, where they managed large, interdisciplinary efforts to bring center-level funding to the college and trained early-career researchers in grantmaking. They maintain research affiliations in biology at CCNY and the University of Southern California and have taught at The Cooper Union School of Art. Before returning to New York, they were faculty at Chapman University, where they ran a computational biology research lab, taught, and developed initiatives to improve mentorship at the college level.

Casey Lardner

Casey Lardner (she/her) is the Lab & Operations Manager at Genspace, the world's first community biology lab. She holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and completed postdoctoral research at Columbia University. Building on a background in ecology and evolutionary biology, much of her research used next-generation sequencing in mice and wild, urban rats to model and understand the human brain. As a graduate student, she co-directed an outreach group called “MINDS” and produced a science storytelling show called Studying the Brain. After her postdoc, she pursued full-time science communication and informal science education as a program coordinator in the Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone. She is the president of BraiNY, a regional organization of the Society for Neuroscience in NYC and is enamored with all brains and minds – whether they belong to mice, pizza rats, people, or other living things.

Tanasia Swift

Tanasia Swift, Field Stations Program Manager, oversees the Field Station Program which includes 9 active sites around New York City. Tanasia holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and is a Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines (WEDG) professional. Tanasia joined Billion Oyster Project in 2017 after 4 years of working as a program manager for non-profit youth programs in Brooklyn, NY. She manages community connections, leads in the development of field stations, and supervises the development of outdoor programming at each Field Station. Her commitment to NYC communities and climate justice is a driving force in her role. In addition to her work at Billion Oyster Project, Tanasia a member of Meridian Institute’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion Aquaculture Community of Practice, a Core Member at Superhero Clubhouse, a New York-based environmental theater organization, and a former Ambassador for Girls That Scuba, the largest community of women divers. Her work has been featured in the local press.