PETER DASZAK serves as the Treasurer and Secretary of the Global Virome Project Leadership Board. He is the President of EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based organization that conducts research and outreach programs on global health, conservation and international development. Peter’s research has been instrumental in identifying and predicting the origins and impact of emerging diseases across the globe. This includes identifying the bat origin of SARS, the drivers of Nipah virus emergence, publishing the first global emerging disease ‘hotspots’ map, discovering SADS coronavirus, designing a strategy to identify the number of unknown viruses in wildlife, identifying the first case of a species extinction due to disease, and discovering the disease chytridiomycosis as the cause global amphibian declines. He is one of the founders of the field of Conservation Medicine and has been instrumental in the growth of EcoHealth, One Health, and now Planetary Health.

A fundamental part of the Peter’s work on disease ecology is directed by the conviction that disease outbreaks are not just predictable, but preventable. This approach is informed by a perspective on emerging infectious disease research that sees problems of human and animal disease as intimately linked – exacerbated by ecological change. With this in mind, he led the research that produced the first ever global emerging disease ‘hotspots’ map to determine where in the world viruses with pandemic potential are most likely to emerge, and developed a strategy to identify just how many of those viruses currently exist.

Peter is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and Chair of the NASEM’s Forum on Microbial Threats. He is a member of the NRC Advisory Committee to the US Global Change Research Program, the Supervisory Board of the One Health Platform, the One Health Commission Council of Advisors, the CEEZAD External Advisory Board, the Cosmos Club, and the Advisory Council of the Bridge Collaborative. He has served on the IOM Committee on global surveillance for emerging zoonoses, the NRC committee on the future of veterinary research, the International Standing Advisory Board of the Australian Biosecurity CRC; and has advised the Director for Medical Preparedness Policy on the White House National Security Staff on global health issues. Peter is a regular advisor to WHO on pathogen prioritization for R&D.

Peter won the 2000 CSIRO medal for collaborative research on the discovery of amphibian chytridiomycosis, is the EHA institutional lead for USAID-EPT-PREDICT, is on the Editorial Board of Conservation Biology, One Health, GeoHealth, One Health Outlook, Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ecohealth.  He has authored over 300 scientific papers and was listed as a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher in 2018. His work has been the focus of extensive media coverage, ranging from press articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, US News & World Report, and broadcast appearances on 60 Minutes, CNN, ABC, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross.