List of Speakers – Public

Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, MD

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. Since his appointment as NIAID director in 1984, Dr. Fauci has overseen an extensive research portfolio devoted to preventing, diagnosing, and treating infectious and immune-mediated diseases.  Dr. Fauci also is chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, where he has made numerous important discoveries related to HIV/AIDS and is one of the most-cited scientists in the field.  Dr. Fauci serves as one of the key advisors to the White House and Department of Health and Human Services on global AIDS issues, and on initiatives to bolster medical and public health preparedness against emerging infectious disease threats such as Ebola and pandemic influenza. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has already been responsible for saving millions of lives throughout the developing world.

Dr. Fauci is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards for his scientific and global health accomplishments, including the National Medal of Science, the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He has been awarded 43 honorary doctoral degrees and is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,280 scientific publications, including several major textbooks.

David Quammen, Science Author and Essayist, Hamilton, MT

David Quammen is an author and journalist whose books include The Song of the Dodo (1996), The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (2006), and  Spillover (2012), a work on the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases (especially viral diseases), which was short-listed for eight national and international awards and won three.  More recently he has released two short books drawn from Spillover and updated to stand alone: Ebola (2014) and The Chimp and the River (2015). In the past thirty years he has also published a few hundred pieces of short nonfiction—feature articles, essays, columns—in magazines such as Harper’s, National Geographic, Outside, Esquire, The Atlantic, Powder, and Rolling Stone.  He writes occasional Op Eds for The New York Times and reviews for The New York Times Book Review.  Quammen has been honored with an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award.  He is a Contributing Writer for National Geographic, in whose service he travels often, usually to wild and remote places.  Home is Bozeman, Montana

Dr. Trevor Mundel, President, Global Health Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Dr. Trevor Mundel, president of the Global Health Division, leads the foundation’s efforts in research and development of vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics to address major global health challenges in the developing world. Trevor oversees the foundation’s strategies in HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, pneumonia, diarrheal disease, enteric and diarrheal diseases, and neglected infectious diseases.

Under Dr. Mundel’s leadership, the Global Health Division also works on platform technologies to accelerate development of global health solutions. All of this work occurs in collaboration with an international network of grantees and partners.

Prior to joining the foundation in 2011, he was global head of development with Novartis, and previously was involved in clinical research at Pfizer and Parke-Davis.

A native of South Africa, Dr. Mundel earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Dr. Mundel also studied mathematics, logic and philosophy – as a Rhodes Scholar – at the University of Oxford. And he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Chicago.

George Church, Professor, Harvard Medical School

George Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard and MIT and Director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard

Professor Church is widely recognized for his innovative contributions to genomic science and his many pioneering contributions to chemistry and biomedicine. In 1984, he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method, which resulted in the first commercial genome sequence (the human pathogen, H. pylori). He helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 and the Personal Genome Project in 2005. Professor Church invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and array DNA synthesizers.

Nurith Aizenman, Correspondent, Global Health and Development, National Public Radio, Washington, DC

Nurith Aizenman is NPR’s correspondent for Global Health and Development. Based in Washington D.C., she regularly travels to low income countries across the globe to report on disease outbreaks, social and economic challenges, and innovative efforts to overcome them. Her reports can be heard on the NPR News programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

She joined NPR in the spring of 2014 after 13 years as a national and international reporter for the Washington Post. In her current role, Aizenman has helped lead NPR’s award-winning coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. She reported on the ground from Liberia as the epidemic reached its peak there in August 2014, and from Sierra Leone as the caseload began breaking records in the following months. In April 2015 this work was honored with a George Foster Peabody Award, among the most prestigious programs recognizing excellence in broadcast journalism.

Most recently, over this past year Aizenman has been a key member of NPR’s team covering the Zika outbreak — reporting from Colombia and its border with Venezuela, and producing the network’s first reports about on-the-ground research into cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome associated with Zika.

Lawrence K. Altman, MD, Reporter, Science Times

Lawrence K. Altman, M.D., is one of the few full-fledged medical doctors working as a daily newspaper reporter. He has been a member of The New York Times science news staff since 1969.  In addition to reporting, he writes “The Doctor’s World” column in Science Times.  A native of Quincy MA, Dr. Altman graduated from Harvard College in 1958 and Tufts University School of Medicine in 1962.  He trained at the Centers for Disease Control, where he worked in the measles immunization program in West Africa and with the WHO smallpox eradication program, and served as editor of the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which reports cases of communicable diseases around the world, and investigations regarding cause and response.

Dr. Altman’s interest in journalism was apparent during college and medical school when he spent summers and vacations at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, where he covered sports, worked on the city desk and wrote feature stories.  In his subsequent professional life he has successfully combined his two personal interests – medicine and journalism.  He was the first physician to work full time for a daily newspaper, joining the N.Y. Times staff in 1969.  In addition to covering the major stories in science and medicine for The Times, he has ventured into some novel areas of journalism, for example covering the personal health of political leaders running for major office in the United States.  Dr. Altman is the recipient of many awards for his writing, for example the Walsh McDermott award from the Associated Medical Schools of New York in 2004, the Jonathan E. Rhoads medal for distinguished achievement in medicine from the American Philosophical Society in 2008, and the author of “Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine,” published by the University of California at Berkeley Press.

Dr. Altman is a clinical professor at the New York University Medical School, a Master of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the New York Academy of Medicine and a member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Adil Najam, Inaugural Dean, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

Dr. Adil Najam is the inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University which was founded in 2014 with a $25 million gift from BU alum Frederick S. Pardee. He is also a Professor of International Relations and of Earth and Environment. Earlier, Prof. Adil Najam served as Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Lahore, Pakistan and as the Director of the Boston University Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. In addition to Boston University, Prof. Najam has taught at MIT and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. His research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, Muslim countries, environment and development, and human development.

Prof. Najam was a co-author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); work for which the scientific panel was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the public understanding of climate change science. In 2008 he was invited by the United Nations Secretary General to serve on the UN Committee on Development (CDP). He was a member of the President of Pakistan’s Special Task Force on Human Development (2001) and served on Pakistan’s Presidential Commission on Higher Education (2002). In 2010 he was awarded the Sitara-i-Imtiaz (Star of Excellence), one of Pakistan’s highest civil awards by the President of Pakistan.