DENNIS CARROLL serves as the Chair of the Global Virome Project Leadership Board. Dennis previously served as the Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID's) Pandemic Influenza and other Emerging Threats Unit. In this position, he led USAID's Emerging Pandemic Threats program - a global effort to combat new disease threats before they can become significant threats to human health. Dennis was responsible for providing strategic and operational leadership for the agency's programs addressing new and emerging disease threats, which included leading the agency's response to the H5N1 avian influenza and H1N1 pandemic viral threats.

Dennis was initially detailed to USAID from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a senior public health advisor in 1991. In 1995 he was named the agency's Senior Infectious Diseases advisor, responsible for overseeing the agency's programs in malaria, tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistance, disease surveillance, as well as neglected and emerging infectious diseases. In this capacity Dennis was directly involved in the development and introduction of a range of new technologies for disease prevention and control, including community-based delivery of treatment of onchocerciasis, rapid diagnostics for malaria, new treatment therapies for drug-resistant malaria, intermittent therapy for pregnant women and “long-lasting” insecticide-treated bed nets for prevention of malaria. He was responsible for the initial design and development of the President's Malaria Initiative. Dennis officially left the CDC and joined USAID in 2005 when he assumed responsibility for leading the USAID response to the spread of avian influenza.

Dennis has a doctorate in biomedical research with a special focus in tropical infectious diseases from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was a Research Scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where he studied the molecular mechanics of viral infection. Dennis has received awards from both the CDC and USAID, including the 2006 USAID Science and Technology Award for his work on malaria and avian influenza, and the 2008 Administrator's Management Innovation Award for his management of the Agency's Avian and Pandemic Influenza program.

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.

JONNA MAZET is a member and Implementation Director of the Global Virome Project Leadership Board. Jonna is a Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and Executive Director of the UC Davis One Health Institute. Her work focuses on global health problem solving for emerging infectious diseases and conservation challenges. She is active in international One Health education, service, and research programs, most notably in relation to pathogen emergence; disease transmission among wildlife, domestic animals, and people; and the ecological drivers of novel disease dynamics.

Currently, Jonna is the Co-Director of the US Agency for International Development’s One Health Workforce – Next Generation, an $85 million educational strengthening project to empower professionals in Central/East Africa and Southeast Asia to address complex and emerging health threats, including antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic diseases. She is the Principal Investigator of and served as the Global Director of PREDICT Project for 10 years, a greater than $200 million viral emergence early warning project under USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats Division. PREDICT served as an early-warning system-strengthening effort aimed at finding emerging viruses before they spread to humans. Since 2009, PREDICT has empowered partners in over 30 countries to deploy a One Health approach for zoonotic disease prevention, detection, and response, including supporting 60 laboratories in the world's most risky areas for spillover to be able to do virus discovery. Our teams have collected and tested samples from over 164,000 animals and people and detected almost 1,200 potentially zoonotic viruses, among them 160 novel coronaviruses, including multiple SARS- and MERS-like coronaviruses. PREDICT provided the proof-of-concept for the Global Virome Project.

Jonna was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2013 in recognition of her successful and innovative approach to emerging environmental and global health threats and serves on the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Forum on Microbial Threats and chairs the Academies’ One Health Action Collaborative. She was appointed to the National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, which was created to assist the federal government with critical science and policy issues related to the COVID-19 crisis and other emerging health threats.

OYEWALE TOMORI is a member of the Global Virome Project Leadership Board. Oyewale is the immediate past President of the Nigerian Academy of Science with experience in virology, disease prevention and control. He was at the University of Ibadan from 1971 to 1994. He later served as the pioneer Vice Chancellor of the Redeemer’s University in Nigeria from 2004 to 2011. From 1994 to 2004, he was a virologist for the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Africa Region, establishing the African Regional Polio Laboratory Network. In 1981, he was recognized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for contributions to Lassa fever research. In 2002, he received the Nigerian National Order of Merit, the country’s highest award for academic and intellectual attainment and national development. He has authored/co-authored over 150 scientific publications.

Dr. Tomori has served or continues to serve on numerous advisory committees, including: (nationally) - Chair, Lassa Fever Steering Committee, National Laboratory Technical Working Group, Expert Working Group on Polio Eradication and Routine Immunization,  and (internationally) - WHO SAGE, WHO Africa Regional Polio Certification Committee, WHO Group of Experts on Yellow Fever Disease, Chairman WHO Yellow Fever Emergency Committee on International Health Regulations, GAVI Board, Vice Chair of U.S. National Academy of Medicine Global Health Risk Framework Commission, and World Bank Interagency Working Group on Financing Preparedness and Response. He is an international member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, Board Chair of Biovaccines Nigeria Ltd. and a Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Institute, Texas A&M University.

EDWARD (EDDY) RUBIN is a member of the Global Virome Project Leadership Board. Eddy is a physician, geneticist and information scientist who has participated in large multinational scientific projects throughout his career in academics and private industry. Following several leadership positions at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory he was appointed the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute. There he led a team that sequenced 13% of the human genome as part of the International Human Genome Project as well as the genomes of thousands of microbes, viruses and fungi. 

In 2016, Eddy became the Chief Scientific Officer at Metabiota, a company that works on epidemic risk and infectious diseases. Presently, he is the Director of Science Corps, a non-profit organization focused on building science capacity worldwide by placing young PhD scientists in underserved regions. In addition, Eddy continues to serve as an Associate Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Eddy has received numerous awards including an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Middlebury College, the University of Rochester Dean’s Award, the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award and has been inducted into the American Society of Clinical Investigation.   

JENNIFER GARDY is a member of the Global Virome Project Leadership Board. Jennifer joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Malaria team as Deputy Director, Surveillance, Data, and Epidemiology in February 2019. Before that, she spent ten years at the British Columbia (BC) Centre for Disease Control and the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health, where she held the Canada Research Chair in Public Health Genomics. Her research focused on the use of genomics as a tool to understand pathogen transmission, and incorporated techniques drawn from genomics, bioinformatics, modeling, information visualization, and the social sciences.

In 2018, Jennifer was named one of BC’s Most Influential Women in STEM by BC Business Magazine and was named one of the Government of Canada’s 20 Women of Impact in STEM. In addition to her science work, Jennifer is also an award-winning science communicator, hosting many episodes of science documentary television, including The Nature of Things and Daily Planet, as well as authoring science books for children, including a new book to be released in 2020.