Christine Heitsch is the Founding Director of the Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology, one of four national NSF-Simons MathBioSys research centers inaugurated in 2018. She is Professor of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, with courtesy appointments in both Biological Sciences and Computational Science & Engineering. Following her PhD in Mathematics from UC Berkeley, she was a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical computer science at UBC and in computational biology at UW Madison.

Her research sits at the interface of the mathematical, computational, and biological sciences, and is supported by both NSF and NIH. She is an expert in the combinatorics of RNA folding, with research publications in all three disciplines. Recognitions include a Career Award at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and an Alumni Achievement Award from the UIUC Department of Mathematics.