Samantha Kost, PhD, is a senior associate on the Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration (SPARC) team at Milken Institute Strategic Philanthropy. She analyzes biomedical research areas in partnership with philanthropists to fund innovative projects and ensure that investments make equitable, transformative impacts in science and health. She received her PhD in neuroscience and psychology from Indiana University, where her research focused on using computational approaches to reveal patterns of information processing in high-dimensional neural data. She then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in clinical neuroscience at the University of Sussex Brighton and Sussex Medical School. This broadened her expertise to include clinical research practices and ethics, with an emphasis on the relationship between brain-body interactions and mental health. Kost also holds a BS in mathematics from North Carolina State University. She is based in the Institute’s Washington, DC office.