Sarah Leinicke

About

Sarah Leinicke joined the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University in June 2024. As Lead AI Platform Engineer, Sarah architects and implements end-to-end full-stack software services and AI engineering platforms that support research projects and enrich productivity and reliability for Kempner cluster users. 

Sarah has almost a decade of experience in research software engineering and in the private sector. She previously served as a Senior Research Software Engineer for the Faculty of Arts & Sciences Researching Computing at Harvard University, where she was the lead full-stack software engineer for a neuroscience research web application. Before coming to Harvard, Sarah worked at the Software Application & Innovation Lab at Boston University. She designed and developed full-stack software solutions to support research projects across a range of domains, from public health to synthetic biology. She also managed relationships with principal investigators and supervised interns. Sarah has presented at national research software engineering conferences, including those hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE). In addition to her academic experience, Sarah was a systems engineer at Draper Laboratory and supported a big data cybersecurity application at the Parsons Corporation. Sarah was an attorney before transitioning to software engineering. She worked with the Office of Administrative Law Judges at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Sarah earned a Master’s in software engineering and a data science certificate from Harvard Extension, a JD from American University, and a BA from Smith College.