Sandra Porter received her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Washington and completed her post-doctoral training in genetics at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle.

Dr. Porter started teaching biotechnology at Seattle Central Community College to see what it would be like, and ended up getting tenure and staying for almost ten years. While at Seattle Central, Dr. Porter had the pleasure of teaching almost all the biotech courses, writing several biotech lab manuals, and serving as the Northwest director for Bio-Link.

Her course assignments included genetics, microbiology, immunology, media and solution preparation, and all the biotech lab courses. She also started new courses in biotechnology for non-science majors and began one of the first community college bioinformatics courses in the country.

In 1996, Dr. Porter started giving professional development workshops for other instructors and received an Innovation Award from the Exxon Education Foundation.

In 2001, Dr. Porter joined Geospiza, Inc. to learn more about bioinformatics first-hand and to combine research with material development. Support from the National Science Foundation has provided funding for Dr. Porter to continue giving workshops and developing materials. Today, Exploring DNA Structure is one of the first manuals to result from this project.