Lecture on “Bio-terrorism Plus Viral Scares i.e. Ebola Virus”

Guest Speaker: Stephen S. Morse, Ph.D. is a Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and was global Co-Director of PREDICT       (a USAID project to strengthen global capacity for surveillance and detection of new infectious disease threats).  He also chairs C.U. Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC).  He was previously an Assistant Professor (virology) at The Rockefeller University, and Program Manager for Biodefense at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where his portfolio included collaborative research projects with former Soviet facilities.

He is the editor of two books, Emerging Viruses selected by American Scientist as on of the “Top 100 Science Books of the 20th Century, and The Evolutionary Biology of Viruses.

Dr. Morse was Chair of the “Conference on Emerging Viruses” (co-sponsored by N.I.H. and Rockefeller Univ.), for which he originated the concept of emerging viruses/infections, was founding Chair of ProMED (Program to Monitor Emerging Diseases), and served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health, and the subsequent “Forum on Emerging Infections”.

Dr. Morse was appointed last year to the U.S. government’s National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity.  He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Fellow of the AAAS, the American Academy of Microbiology, the American College of Epidemiology, the NY Academy of Medicine and the NY Academy of Sciences.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.