Kirsty McFarland

Kirsty McFarland is a Principal Scientist at STR since September 2023, previously serving as Director of R&D at Pillar Biosciences Incorporated from August 2022 to September 2023. Prior to that, Kirsty held the role of Principal Member of Technical Staff at Draper, leading the FELIX program and collaborating with Harvard Medical School and Boston University on genetic analysis methods from May 2016 to August 2022. Kirsty's academic experience includes teaching microbiology courses as an Adjunct Faculty member at Emmanuel College and conducting postdoctoral research at Boston Children's Hospital in the Division of Infectious Diseases, focusing on Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Kirsty also served as a Microbial Pathogenesis Laboratory Instructor at Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology and conducted postgraduate research at Trinity College Dublin, where a Ph.D. in Microbial Genetics was obtained.