Constanza M. Vidal Bustamante

Constanza M. Vidal Bustamante, PhD, is a fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where she leads the Center’s quantum technology policy portfolio and contributes to biotechnology policy work.

Vidal Bustamante’s research aims to identify sound policy approaches to advance U.S. technological innovation and competitiveness. A current focus of her work concerns evaluating the effectiveness of current strategies designed to protect U.S. technological leadership in emerging dual-use technologies (such as quantum computers) by obstructing foreign adversaries’ access, development, and ultimate use of these technologies against U.S. national security. She is particularly interested in rethinking existing frameworks for research security and technology controls to better reflect the current geopolitical landscape while safeguarding technological progress through close coordination with the research community, industry, and international partners.

Prior to CNAS, Vidal Bustamante was a Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy fellow with the National Academies of Sciences, where she led a research project on strategic priorities to build the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing workforce. She additionally contributed to multiple workshops with experts in government, industry, and academia on topics including enhancing lab-to-market technology transfer and expanding technological innovation in the health sector.

Vidal Bustamante completed her PhD at Harvard University. Her doctoral research leveraged wearable sensors to characterize individuals’ real-world behavioral patterns and health outcomes over extended periods of time. While at Harvard, she was also president of the Harvard Science Policy Group and a researcher with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where she authored reports on digital technologies and on the broader U.S. technology leadership strategy, with a focus on industrial policies and the CHIPS and Science Act.

Vidal Bustamante holds doctoral, master's, and bachelor’s degrees in psychology and cognitive neuroscience from Harvard University.