Viral Forecasting

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Nathan Wolfe (Global Viral Forecasting Initiative)

3:35pm Thursday, 03/12/2009

Location: Imperial Ballroom

Current global disease control efforts focus largely on attempting to stop pandemics after they have already emerged. This fire brigade approach, which generally involves drugs, vaccines, and behavioral change, has severe limitations. Just as we discovered in the 1960s that it is better to prevent heart attacks then try to treat them, over the next 50 years we will realize that it is better to stop pandemics before they spread and that effort should increasingly be focused on viral forecasting and pandemic prevention.

In this talk Wolfe will discuss how novel viruses enter into the human population from animals and go on to become pandemics, then discuss attempts by his research group to study this process and attempt to control viruses that have only recently emerged. By creating a global network at the interface of humans and animals we are working to move viral forecasting from a theoretical possibility to a reality.

Nathan Wolfe

Global Viral Forecasting Initiative

Dr. Nathan Wolfe is the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University and Director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative. He received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford in 1993 and his doctorate in Immunology & Infectious Diseases from Harvard in 1998. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship in 1997, Dr. Wolfe was awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) International Research Scientist Development Award in 1999 and the prestigious NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2005.

Dr. Wolfe has published over 50 articles and chapters. Among his major findings include the discovery of the first evidence of natural transmission of retroviruses from nonhuman primates to humans. His work has been published in or covered by Nature, Science, The Lancet, PNAS, JAMA, The New York Times, The Economist, Wired, Discover, Scientific American, NPR, Popular Science, Seed, and Forbes. He has received research support totaling over $20m in grants and contracts from the Google.org, The Skoll Foundation, NIH, the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Geographic Society, Merck Research Laboratories and various branches of the US Department of Defense, including: the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance & Response System (GEIS), HIV/AIDS Prevention Program (DHAPP), and the US Military HIV Research Program (USMHRP). He has extensive consulting experience and has served on a number of advisory and editorial boards, including, since 2004, the editorial board of EcoHealth and since 2008, DARPA’s Defense Science Research Council (DSRC).

Dr. Wolfe has over eight years of full-time experience living and conducting biomedical research in Southeast Asia (Malaysia) and sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Uganda). He founded and directs the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI), a pandemic early warning system which monitors the spillover of novel infectious agents from animals into humans. GVFI coordinates activities of over 100 scientists and staff from countries around the world. He currently has active research and public health projects in Cameroon, China, Central African Republic, DR Congo, PR Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Lao, Madagascar, Malaysia and Sao Tome.