Katherine (Kate) Weatherford Darling, PhD is a sociologist working across the boundaries of medical sociology, feminist science studies, health policy and bioethics. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Social Science program at University of Maine at Augusta. She is also affiliated at University of Maine Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering and the Center for Interdisciplinary Population & Health Research at MaineHealth Institute for Research.

Before moving to Maine, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) Program. Between 2015 and 2017, Kate worked at the Science & Justice Research Center at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she coordinated the Science & Justice Graduate Training Program and taught in the Sociology Department. She completed her doctorate in Sociology at University of California, San Francisco (2016) and was awarded the Department of Social Behavioral Sciences Dissertation Award. Her dissertation research traced the transformation of HIV into a manageable yet expensive chronic illness. Her research has been published at Engaging Science & Technology Studies, Gigascience, Social Science & Medicine, Social Studies of Science and the Journal of Health & Human Behavior.

Kate collaborates with graduate and undergraduate students on research, including current projects on community health workers in Maine, the social and ethical implications of genetic sequencing in cancer treatment, and the history of public, corporate and philanthropic investment in biomedical research in the San Francisco Bay Area.