The Hopkins Center for Health Security defines GCBRs as “Those events in which biological agents—whether naturally emerging or reemerging, deliberately created and released, or laboratory engineered and escaped—could lead to sudden, extraordinary, widespread disaster beyond the collective capability of national and international governments and the private sector to control. If unchecked, GCBRs would lead to great suffering, loss of life, and sustained damage to national governments, international relationships, economies, societal stability, or global security.” The presentation will explore these concepts by discussing (1) advances in biotechnology serving as potential cause and solution of such risks (2) how we study and model these risks to prepare for them, and (3) what global efforts exist and/or are needed to engage scientists and non-scientists to confront these risks.
 
About the Speaker:

Nancy D. Connell is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a visiting Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a microbial geneticist by training. Dr. Connell’s work at the Center is focused on advances in life sciences and technology and their application to a number of developments in the areas of biosecurity, biosafety and biodefense. Her research projects analyze novel biotechnologies that might impact (1) the development of Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBR) in ecosystems, (2) the development of surge capacity for medical countermeasure manufacturing and other response mechanisms in the event of global pandemics or global catastrophic events. Dr. Connell is a member of the Board on Life Sciences and is a National Associate of the National Academies of Sciences, and she completed a six-month sabbatical as Visiting Scholar at the Board on Life Sciences. Dr. Connell is a member of the US-CDC’s Biological Agent Containment Working Group in the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response and was recently appointed the serve on the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. Before joining the Center, Dr. Connell was Professor and Director of Research in the Division of Infectious Disease in the Department of Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences. Dr. Connell’s major research focus was antibacterial drug discovery in respiratory pathogens such as M. tuberculosis and B. anthracis. Dr. Connell chaired the Institutional Biosafety Committee of Rutgers University and directed NJMS’s biosafety level three containment laboratory beginning in 1997. Her recent work focused on the use of predatory bacteria as novel therapeutics for treatment of Gram negative bacterial infections, including MDR strains and select agents. Dr. Connell was continuously funded by the NIH, the Department of Defense and DARPA, industry, and/or other sources from 1992 to 2018.  
                   
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