Speaker Profile

Biography
Julianne McCall serves as Co-Director of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, housed within the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research. In that role, she oversees cross-sector health policy working groups and projects, research grantmaking, and state government interagency efforts, which include serving on Governor Newsom's COVID-19 Testing Task Force and as a co-author of the first CA Surgeon General's Report on Adverse Childhood Experiences. Previously, McCall worked in public health and research policy in the California Senate Office of Research and as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology. Prior to her career in policy, she spent sixteen years in neuroscience research labs, including the Salk Institute, Stanford University, the Cleveland Clinic, and the National Center for Microscopy Imaging Research. She conducted medical research as a Fulbright Fellow in Sweden and as a neuroscientist at the Neuroregeneration Laboratory of Heidelberg University in Germany. In the community, McCall co-teaches the UC Riverside Science to Policy Graduate Certificate Course, serves on the Editorial Board of the California Journal of Politics and Policy, occasionally directs the International "Brain Bee" Neuroscience Olympiad for high school students across fifty countries, and is the co-founder of TEDxFulbright, the Sacramento Brain Bee, and a chapter of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network for racial justice. McCall earned a PhD in Neuroscience from Heidelberg University in Germany, a Master's degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, San Diego, and a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience from Denison University.