On Friday, November 18, 2022, CEID hosted virtual discussion on pandemic prevention and preparedness.
- Dr. Davidson Hamer, Interim Director, CEID
- Dr. Matthew Hepburn, Senior Advisor to the OSTP Director on Pandemic Preparedness, Office of Science and Technology Policy
- Dr. Diafuka Saila-Ngita, Research Associate Professor of Global Health, Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
- Lauren Sauer, MS, Global Center for Health Security Scholar and Associate Professor, Department of Environmental, Agricultural & Occupational Health, UNMC College of Public Health
PANEL 2 (11:15AM -12PM ET): Pandemic Preparedness Research & Surveillance
- Dr. Gerald Keusch, Professor of Medicine & International Health, BU Schools of Medicine and Public Health & Associate Director, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL)
- Dr. Stanley Perlman, University of Iowa Distinguished Professor, Microbiology & Immunology and Pediatrics
- Dr. Linda Saif, Distinguished University Professor, The Ohio State University, Center for Food Animal Health (CFAES, OARDC) & College of Veterinary Medicine, co-Director of the Virus and Emerging Pathogens Program, OSU Infectious Diseases Institute
LEARN MORE ABOUT FEATURED PANELISTS
Dr. Davidson Hamer is a board-certified specialist in infectious diseases with a particular interest in tropical infectious diseases and extensive field experience in maternal, neonatal, and child survival research including studies of health systems strengthening, neonatal sepsis, malaria, pneumonia, and diarrheal diseases. Dr. Hamer is the Surveillance Lead for the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network, a global network of 71 sites in 28 countries that conducts surveillance of emerging infectious diseases using returning travelers, immigrants, and refugees as sentinels of infection. In this role, he has been collaborating with the Travelers’ Health Branch of the CDC on enhanced surveillance of the current monkeypox outbreak, COVID-19 surveillance, and important retrospective analyses of dengue in travelers.
At Boston University, Dr. Hamer has been involved in many COVID-19-related prevention, control, and research projects. As a faculty member in the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories and the Precision Diagnostics Center, he assisted with the COVID-19 mitigation strategies necessary for keeping the campus healthy and safe. Dr. Hamer also served as the director of the BU COVID-19 Surveillance and Response Team, and a member of the Medical Advisory Group to the president of Boston University, the Community Health Oversight Group, and the Vaccine Preparedness Group. Dr. Hamer has particular expertise in the epidemiology and diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 as well as strategies for prevention of transmission, including vaccination.
Dr. Matthew Hepburn is currently a Senior Advisor to Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) for pandemic preparedness. Previously, Dr. Hepburn was the Vaccine Development Lead for the Countermeasures Acceleration Group (CAG), formerly known as Operation Warp Speed, a partnership between the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Defense (DoD) founded in May 2020 to help accelerate the development of COVID-19 vaccines. Prior to this position, Dr. Hepburn served as the Joint Project Lead of Enabling Biotechnologies for the Joint Program Executive Office for CBRN Defense. In this role, he was responsible for establishing a start-to-finish capability to develop vaccines and therapeutic solutions against current future biological threats. Due to the creation of this foundational capability, the team implemented the DoD Vaccine Acceleration Project, which provides key investments to advance vaccines and antibody therapeutic efforts, with special emphasis on acceleration of manufacturing these products and clinical trials. Dr. Hepburn served 23 years in the United States Army as an infectious diseases physician, retiring as a Colonel. His final assignment was as a Program Manager at DARPA (2013-2019).
Concurrent with the first two years at DARPA, Dr. Hepburn also served on the research and development team at the newly Research, Development and Acquisitions Directorate at the Defense Health Agency. From 2010-2013, he served as Director of Medical Preparedness on the White House National Security Staff. Additional assignments have included Chief Medical Officer, Level 2 Treatment facility in Iraq (2009-2010), for which he earned a Bronze Star.
Prior to deployment, Dr. Hepburn was Clinical Research Director at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (2007-2009), leading domestic and international clinical research efforts on biodefense products. This role entailed extensive service with the Cooperative Threat Reduction program in the republics of the former Soviet Union. Col. Hepburn was also an exchange officer to the United Kingdom (2005-2007) and internal medicine chief of residents at Brooke Army Medical Center (2000-2001) at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Dr. Hepburn completed his infectious disease fellowship and internal medicine residency training at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. He received his medical degree and undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University.
Dr. Diafuka Saila-Ngita is Research Associate Professor of Global Health at Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in the Department of Infectious Disease and Global Health. He is a trained veterinarian and holds a doctoral degree in resource economics from the University of Connecticut. He has more than three decades of international experience particularly in Africa spanning human, animal and wildlife sectors. The last 15 years, he has been involved with major USAID global health security programs. He is currently the Co-Lead for surveillance, modelling and mapping on USAID STOP Spillover project since 2020. Prior to STOP Spillover, he was the Technical Advisor for Africa for USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT). Under EPT, he was instrumental in building the Africa One Health University Network (AFROHUN) as well as One Health Platforms across Africa.
Lauren Sauer, MS is the director of operations with the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR). She is also a research associate in the Department of Emergency Medicine and a doctoral candidate in health and public policy in the Johns Hopkins Department of Health Policy and Management, where she studies quality of aid in response to disasters and the effects of disasters on healthcare infrastructure. Sauer is also the program manager for the National Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response (PACER). She has worked remotely and on the ground for several disaster responses, including Hurricane Katrina, the 2009 California wildfires, the Haiti earthquake, the Pakistan floods, and, more recently, the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa. Professor Sauer focuses on special pathogens response and research capacity nationally and globally.
Dr. Gerald Keusch Board-certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Keusch has been involved in clinical medicine, teaching, and research for his entire career. His research has ranged from the molecular pathogenesis of tropical infectious diseases to field-based population research on cholera, dysentery, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition-related immune deficits and host susceptibility to infectious diseases. He has been an advocate for Global Health and research capacity and public health strengthening in low-income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Under his leadership from 1998 to 2004, the programs of the Fogarty International Center were greatly expanded to create a more global culture of science, to harness science for global health, and to support research, capacity building, and science policy on pressing global issues affecting the world’s population. Dr. Keusch’s work at CEID focuses on Global Health Governance, Global Health Security, and the importance of building research capacity for pandemic response in the countries most likely to experience outbreaks and least able to respond.
Dr. Stanley Perlman received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts and his M.D. from the University of Miami, Miami, Florida. He was trained in Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. He is a member of the VRBPAC of the FDA and the COVID-19 Advisory Committee of the ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices). His current research efforts are focused on coronavirus pathogenesis, including virus-induced demyelination and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and COVID-19. His laboratory has developed several novel animal models useful for studying pathogenesis and evaluating vaccines and anti-viral therapies. His studies are directed at understanding why aged patients and mice developed more severe disease than younger individuals after infection with SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2 and also on why there is a male predominance in patients with more severe disease after infection with SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2. His laboratory has developed several mouse models for COVID-19. Among other topics, his research is now focusing on the loss of sense of smell (anosmia) and taste (ageusia) and neurological disease in patients with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and long COVID-19.
Dr. Linda Saif Linda Saif is a Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University (OSU) in the Center for Food Animal Health (CFAES, OARDC) and College of Veterinary Medicine and co-Director of the Virus and Emerging Pathogens Program (OSU Infectious Diseases Institute). Her degrees include BA from The College of Wooster and MS/PhD from OSU. She is a virologist and immunologist, whose research focuses on comparative aspects of enteric and respiratory viral infections (coronaviruses, rotaviruses and caliciviruses) of animals and humans including disease models, pathogenesis, mucosal immunity and vaccine development. Dr. Saif is known internationally for her 4 decades of research on coronavirus infections of livestock, wildlife, and humans (SARS, MERS, SARS-CoV-2) and their zoonotic potential and mechanisms of interspecies transmission. Dr. Saif was an advisor to the WHO and CDC during the 2003 SARS outbreak. Her laboratory is a WHO International Reference Lab for animal coronaviruses and she is the Co-Director of an FAO Reference Center for Zoonotic Coronaviruses. She was an advisor to the Ministry in Saudi Arabia on MERS in camels. She is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors and Argentine Academia Nacional de Agronomía y Veterinaria, an elected Fellow of the AAAS and the American Academy of Microbiology and an American College of Veterinary Microbiologists honorary diplomat. In 2015, she was the first woman to receive the Wolf Prize in Agriculture. Dr. Saif has coauthored over 440 referred journal publications and 78 book chapters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she is providing One Health expertise about SARS-CoV-2, including interspecies transmission, zoonoses and immunity.