CSET Events

The Biotechnology Landscape

How understanding global biology research activity can inform pandemic preparedness

CSET hosted a discussion with Dr. Amesh Adalja, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, on the importance of understanding the breadth and depth of global biological activity in preparing for future pandemics.

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Effective government responses to future pandemics will require better understanding—and information—about the depth and breadth of viral research worldwide, where therapeutics are available or in development, and gaps in research, therapeutic development, and approved vaccines.

View our conversation on assessing pandemic preparedness featuring Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Dr. Adalja—whose work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity. Dr. Adalja joined CSET Research Fellow Dr. Caroline Schuerger for a panel discussion moderated by CSET Senior Fellow and Director of Biotechnology Programs Anna Puglisi.

Recording and Discussion

Participants

Dr. Amesh Adalja is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity. Dr. Adalja has served on US government panels tasked with developing guidelines for the treatment of plague, botulism, and anthrax in mass casualty settings and the system of care for infectious disease emergencies, and as an external advisor to the New York City Health and Hospital Emergency Management Highly Infectious Disease training program, as well as on a FEMA working group on nuclear disaster recovery. He is currently a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s (IDSA) Precision Medicine working group and is one of their media spokespersons; he previously served on their public health and diagnostics committees. Dr. Adalja is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians Pennsylvania Chapter’s EMS & Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness Committee as well as the Allegheny County Medical Reserve Corps. He was formerly a member of the National Quality Forum’s Infectious Disease Standing Committee and the US Department of Health and Human Services’ National Disaster Medical System, with which he was deployed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake; he was also selected for their mobile acute care strike team. Dr. Adalja’s expertise is frequently sought by international and national media.

Dr. Adalja is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security. He was a coeditor of the volume Global Catastrophic Biological Risks, a contributing author for the Handbook of Bioterrorism and Disaster Medicine, the Emergency Medicine CorePendium, Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple, and a NATO volume on bioterrorism. He has also published in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Caroline Schuerger is a Research Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where she focuses on emerging issues in biotechnology and AI. Prior to joining CSET, Caroline earned her PhD in Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She was a 2020 Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She has earned Bachelor degrees in Biology and Chemistry from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Anna Puglisi is the Director of Biotechnology Programs and Senior Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). Previously she served as the National Counterintelligence Officer for East Asia, advising senior U.S. and foreign government officials at the highest levels, academia and the private sector on counterintelligence (CI) issues. She played a prominent role in drafting the recently released U.S. National Counterintelligence Strategy, and in designing mitigation strategies for both the public and private sectors to protect technology. As a member of the Senior Analytic Service, she developed multidisciplinary efforts to understand global technology developments and their impact on U.S. competitiveness and national security, as well as efforts to target U.S. technology. Anna also started a government-wide working group looking at developments in biological sciences and has worked on several bio-security issues. She has received numerous awards including the FBI Director’s Award for Excellence. Anna holds an MPA, an MS in environmental science and a BA in Biology with honors, all from Indiana University. She studied at the Princeton in Beijing Chinese language school and was a visiting scholar in Nankai University’s Department of Economics, where she studied China’s S&T policies, infrastructure development and university reforms. She is a co-author of the 2013 study Chinese Industrial Espionage, the first book-length treatment of the topic, as well as countless related proprietary studies.