This private event will take place at 10:00 am US Mountain Time.
In this hour-long virtual discussion, Derek Smith will explore where SARS-CoV-2 fits in the horizon scanning and pandemic planning that has gone on over the last decade.
ABOUT DEREK SMITH:
Derek Smith is a former SFI postdoc and member of the SFI Science Board. Today, Derek is a Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics at Cambridge University and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Pathogen Evolution. He was the founding director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center on Evolution Modelling and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Derek currently serves as a member of the WHO's Influenza Vaccine Strain Selection Committee. He is also involved in vaccine strain selection for other human and non-human pathogens.
Derek's research is focused on how pathogens evolve, to what extent this evolution is predictable, and determining public and animal health measures against such ever-changing pathogens. Derek is also a member of the Department of Virology at Erasmus Medical Centre in The Netherlands, and was a Senior Research Fellow at the Fogarty International Center at the United States National Institutes of Health.