Nathan Wolfe is the founder and chair of Metabiota. Wolfe received his doctorate in immunology and infectious diseases from Harvard in 1998. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship and the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and was a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. Wolfe has published over 100 scientific publications, and his work
has been published in or covered by Nature, Science, The New York Times, The Economist, NPR, The New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes, among others. His critically acclaimed book, The Viral Storm, has been published in six languages and was shortlisted in 2012 for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize. In 2011 he was named as one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time magazine; Rolling Stone named him one of the “100 Agents of Change” in 2009; and Popular Science recognized him as one of their “Brilliant 10”in 2006.
Metabiota is a global pioneer in infectious disease risk solutions, striving to make the world more resilient to epidemics. The platform shows that exposure to epidemic risk can be quantified and objectively analyzed by calculating the frequency, severity, and expense of infectious disease outbreaks and generating high resolution, demographic, geographic, and epidemic results for a broad range of use cases to ensure against loss.
Metabiota delivers actionable, data-driven insights that help mitigate risk. Their proprietary, historical, global data set is curated, cleansed, and continually updated covering 150 pathogens, 48 million cases, and 6 million deaths from more than 230 locations and 240 data sources, providing a condensed, refined view of the data with insights from multiple sources. Its disease model library is the largest in the insurtech industry.
Jeanine Buchanich is a research associate professor of biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. She also serves as deputy director of the Center for Occupational Biostatistics and Epidemiology, director of the Biostatistics Consulting Laboratory, and an affiliated faculty member for the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory.
Her primary research interests are in the conduct and analysis of occupational and environmental epidemiology studies, and dynamic disease modeling with a focus on mortality disparities. She has worked on occupational studies of workers exposed to chloroprene, formaldehyde, acrylamide, copper smelting, coal mining, and jet engine and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Buchanich has spent several years analyzing patterns in overdose deaths and ways in which to reduce the effects of this deadly epidemic. She is also involved in occupational and environmental epidemiology, vital status tracing systems, and dynamic modeling. As part of an initiative to make a Pitt Public Health-held mortality repository more accessible to public health professionals and other stakeholders, she has investigated mortality trends and disparities in the U.S., Pa., and local county area.
A native of Pittsburgh, Buchanich received her MPH and PhD in epidemiology from Pitt Public Health, her MEd in school counseling from the Pitt’s School of Education, and her BS in psychology, also from Pitt. She has served as principal investigator on eight studies, mentored over 100 students, and has more than 75 peer-reviewed publications.
Derek Cummings is a professor of biology and emerging pathogens at the University of Florida. Prior to his arrival at the University of Florida, he worked for the school of public health at Johns Hopkins University, where he was an associate professor in the department of epidemiology.
Cummings’ research interests include the speed of transmission, patterns of transmission, and characterizing the natural history of a pathogen with a focus on identifying the factors that influence the spread of infectious diseases in order to develop strategies to control and curb their proliferation. He works with outbreaks and emerging pathogens, including MERS, Ebola, novel influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and dengue. He’s worked in China, Thailand, Liberia, Senegal, Saudi Arabia, and Pittsburgh.
Cummings received his PhD in 2004 from Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering in geography and environmental engineering, an MHS in 2004 from Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in international health, and an MS in 2001 from Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering in geography and environmental engineering. He received his ScB from Brown University in 1996.
Nelson L. Michael is director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). He served for 29 years in the U.S. Army at Walter Reed, including 12 years as director of the U.S. military’s HIV research program (MHRP) and eight months as the WRAIR deputy commander, retiring at the rank of colonel in the medical corps. He guided the MHRP, an international HIV vaccine research program, through the completion of the RV144 HIV prime-boost vaccine study, which provided the world’s first demonstration that a preventive HIV vaccine was possible.
Michael’s research interests include HIV molecular pathogenesis and host genetics, HIV clinical research, and HIV/Ebola/MERS Co-V and ZIKV vaccine development. He is a professor of medicine for the Uniformed Services University, and is a diplomat for the American Board of Internal Medicine. He serves as a peer reviewer of many scientific journals and is author/coauthor of more than 340 scientific publications, and eight textbooks. Honors include the Army Commendation Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Meritorious Service Medal, Defense Meritorious
Service Medal, Legion of Merit, and Hero of Military Medicine Award. He served on President Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and has sat on many other working groups and advisory committees.
Michael graduated summa cum laude from University of California, Los Angeles, in 1979 with a degree in biology; and from Stanford University with MD and PhD degrees in 1986. He trained in internal medicine at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, from 1986 to 1989.