Dr. Daphne Oluwaseun Martschenko is an Assistant Professor at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. Her scholarship identifies novel ways to examine and enhance the ethical and socially responsible conduct, translation, and interpretation of human genetic research. 

Daphne is passionate about fostering public and community engagement with controversial scientific research. She has appeared in the New York Times and on numerous podcasts including Freakonomics Radio. You can also find her work in outlets such as Scientific American and The Conversation. In 2023, Daphne was named one of 10 Scientists to Watch by ScienceNews, and in 2024 she was recognized by Scientist Spotlights Initiative as a science role model to students learning science.

Daphne recently wrote a book entitled What We Inherit: How New Technologies and Old Myths Are Shaping Our Genomic Future with friend and colleague Sam Trejo, a sociologist at Princeton University. Over the past decade, the field of human genetics has rapidly produced a wide range of never-before-seen genomic tools; together, they debate and discuss a range of social, ethical, and policy issues raised by this so-called DNA revolution. Though there’s plenty the two disagree about, they share a firm belief that—in order to successfully navigate the transition to a society where genetic prediction is increasingly accurate and available—it is vital that society take seriously the impact both of DNA and of pernicious genetic myths. What We Inherit will be published by Princeton University Press in February 2026.

In a former life, Daphne was an internationally competitive rower, representing the United States at the Under-23 World Championships twice. She became the first Black person to ever compete in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race in 2015 and was President of Cambridge University Boat Club in 2018. Nowadays when she’s not investigating the ethical, legal, and social implications of human genetics, you can find her at the yoga studio, in the garden with her husband Ali, or with their cat Sassy.