Biodefense

Update: Schar School’s Popescu Appointed to Council on Strategic Risks, Wins Alumni Award

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 13:28:59 +0000

Update: Schar School’s Popescu Appointed to Council on Strategic Risks, Wins Alumni Award Andrew J Schappert Wed, 10/19/2022 - 09:28

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Gregory Koblentz

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Saskia Popescu: ‘If I could design a [biodefense] program, it would be this.’

This week, epidemiologist Saskia Popescu has been named a senior fellow at the Janne E. Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons, an institute of the Council on Strategic Risks. On Friday, October 21, she joins other noted ��AV graduates at the university’s Celebration of Distinction: Honoring Mason Excellence alumni benefit. She is this year’s Schar School of Policy and Government Distinguished Alumni Award winner. We republish our story about Popescu’s career.

How do you prepare a hospital for a mass biological event with extreme consequences, such as the coronavirus? It’s complex and can change daily, but ��AV alumna Saskia Popescu is the expert who can help.

The Schar School assistant professor has been a go-to consultant for hospitals and the World Health Organization, helping to control infections and prepare for new outbreaks.

Popescu, who earned a PhD in biodefense from Mason in 2019, also helps educate policy makers and the public. Her expertise on coronavirus and approaches to containing it are highlighted regularly by elite media outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post. She even serves as an infection prevention consultant for larger businesses and the City of Phoenix, Arizona, in their efforts to incorporate COVID-19 safety into the workplace.

“I’ve always been fascinated by disease transmission dynamics,” Popescu said, adding that she first became interested in epidemiology at age 9, when her mom gave her a copy of The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.

“We have known about [infectious disease] for hundreds of years but still struggle against it,” she said. “Learning from [each outbreak] and being able to pivot and evolve with that is a really fascinating process to me.”

And that’s just what she gets to do each day.

The infection prevention epidemiologist from Arizona said she has built COVID-19 response and preparedness programs for hospitals from scratch, and is constantly looking at case counts and analyzing data locally and internationally to ensure she’s providing the most informed recommendations possible.

Popescu at work.

“It’s extremely hard to build a robust response and preparedness program and be able to keep it agile, respond to changes in the science and data, and do it in a way that is pragmatic,” Popescu said. “Building something with the resources at hand and in a way that follows evidence-based measures is something I really love and am proud of, and getting to problem-solve and think critically in tough, chaotic situations.”

Popescu says she was drawn to Mason’s biodefense program because it was the only one that offered what she calls a perfect intersection of science and policy.

“If I could design a program, it would be this,” she said.

“I really love the program at Mason and am grateful to teach in it [because] it reaches across multiple specialties,” Popescu said. “[Mason] instilled that it’s never just coming at a global health security problem from one view; you have to look at all these moving pieces and put together a mosaic to really understand what’s going on.”

That includes looking at prevention strategies, as well as policy and economic implications, she says.

“Dr. Popescu has been having a major impact both locally and nationally,” said Gregory Koblentz, director of Mason’s biodefense program. “She has a knack for explaining complex topics in a way that is easily understandable by people with no background in epidemiology.”

“Now, as an assistant professor…she has an opportunity to train the next generation of scholars and practitioners in this field,” he said. “Whether in the ICU, on Twitter, or in the classroom, Dr. Popescu exemplifies the mission of the Biodefense Program, which is to bridge the gap between science and policy to improve health security.

—Additional reporting by Buzz McClain

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Biodefense

Alumni

Schar School News October 2022

Continuing to Track the Labs that Handle the Most Dangerous Pathogens

Andrew J Schappert — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 17:10:04 +0000

Continuing to Track the Labs that Handle the Most Dangerous Pathogens Andrew J Schappert Tue, 09/06/2022 - 13:10

In This Story

Gregory Koblentz

There are now 67 Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories under construction, in operation, or in the planning phase in the world, a significant increase from May 2021, when the Schar School’s Biodefense Graduate Program Director Gregory Koblentz and Filippa Lentzos of King’s College London began tracking them.

Their team maintains an interactive map—GlobalBioLabs.org—that allows users to learn details of BSL-4 labs, including their home nation’s safety and security policies. The work is crucial: BSL-4 is the maximum level of security for biomedical studies of pathogens, equipped with elaborate safety systems to keep the pathogens contained.

The team also provides informed policy recommendations for strengthening biorisk management nationally and internationally.

“This map provides the most comprehensive accounting of where maximum containment laboratories are located around the world,” said Koblentz. “By collating publicly available information in a systemic way, we've been able to provide insights into the distribution and capabilities of these labs.”

Only three of 26 countries with these maximum containment labs have national policies to govern “dual-use” biological research and development activities. Dual-use research refers to work that can be used for scientific purposes—or misused for hostile purposes. These activities are significant because of their potential to be reused by other states, or nonstate actors, to cause harm.

A new version of the interactive map will go live later in 2022 and includes for the first time details about BSL-3+ labs around the world. These labs are increasingly popular for conducting high-risk research, “but there is little national or international guidance about how these labs should be designed and operated,” Koblentz said.

The updated website will also have a wealth of new information about the biosafety, biosecurity, and dual-use research oversight laws in place around the world.

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Biodefense

Schar School News September 2022

The Danger in Using AI to Create Drugs as Weapons

Andrew J Schappert — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 16:46:42 +0000

The Danger in Using AI to Create Drugs as Weapons Andrew J Schappert Thu, 04/21/2022 - 12:46

In This Story

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

“The development of actual weapons in past weapons programs have shown, time and again, that what seems possible theoretically may not be possible in practice,” says Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley. Read more.

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Biodefense

Schar School in the Media

Meet the PhD Biodefense Student and Counterproliferation Advisor Who Writes Sci-Fi and Spy Thrillers

Andrew J Schappert — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 16:13:27 +0000

Meet the PhD Biodefense Student and Counterproliferation Advisor Who Writes Sci-Fi and Spy Thrillers Andrew J Schappert Thu, 11/04/2021 - 12:13

In This Story

Gregory Koblentz

Sci-fi and espionage romance novelist Laura Denlinger

Fiction writers are often asked what inspires their ideas. In the case of this important plot point, in the new book Interstellar Angel (An Astral Heat Romance) by Laura Navarre, the light-bulb moment for the story came during a real-life biodefense PhD class about genetically modified pathogens. That’s where she cooked up in her mind the fictional Valyrensis novicida, which, in the story, eradicates exactly 88 percent of the Valyrians, who are the galaxy's leading race. The ensuing turmoil across the galaxy causes a pangalactic race war.

The novel, the first of a series, debuted on Amazon’s LGBTQ+ Science Fiction bestseller list when it was released in October. In a bit of apparent family competitiveness, Laura’s “sinister twin sister” Nikki has published The Russian Obsession, one of a trio of espionage thrillers rooted in the realities of high-tech intelligence.

Interesting family, yes?

But wait: There’s a twist. Laura and Nikki Navarre are actually one and the same. Those are the noms de plume of Laura Schmidt Denlinger, a senior counterproliferation advisor and a PhD student at the Schar School of Policy and Government’s groundbreaking biodefense program.

By day, Denlinger is a Department of Energy National Laboratories employee on a long-term rotation to a sister U.S. government agency where she advances cutting-edge cooperative threat reduction work. Once you know what she does for a living, the idea of wiping out 88 percent of a galaxy’s population as detailed in her fiction isn’t so far-fetched.

Denlinger is deputy team chief of a unit “that does capacity building for foreign partners that are looking to do all sorts of things—counter North Korean [weapons of mass destruction] proliferation, keep ballistic missiles out of the hands of Iran, strengthen chemical security around the world; and then also there's a nuclear security program that I manage.”

She came to the Schar School once she learned from program director Gregory Koblentz that the biodefense program aligned with her strong interest in cyber threats. It was in one of her subsequent Schar School classes that she came up with the pivotal plot for her next book.

“I got the idea for Interstellar Angel in Dr. [Katalin] Kiss’ microbiology class in the fall of 2019 when she was talking about genetically modified pathogens,” Denlinger said. “That gave me the idea for the virus that wipes out a galaxy’s leading race.”

Does it surprise anyone that Denlinger’s PhD thesis will be “taking models and paradigms from biological and nonproliferation and applying them to counter state sponsored cyber threats from Russia. Basically, lessons learned from biological nonproliferation for cyber.”

Being two authors, a PhD student, and a vital cog in the protection of the country, if not all humanity, Denlinger’s days are somewhat busy. She has good things to say about the Schar School and its professors when it comes to supporting flexibility in schedules. Still, she sometimes found herself “studying for microbiology exams on a plane at two in the morning with my little light on while everybody around me slept,” she said. But all in all, “I’ve managed to keep those balls in the air.”

An avid writer since fourth grade, Denlinger finally published her first book in 2009 “after 50 rejections,” she said. But once she sold one, she sold a second within the month with the help of an agent. “That was very exciting,” she said.

Her work has been published by romance powerhouse Harlequin Enterprises and other major publishers but now, 10 books into her duplicate career(s), she’s regained the rights to many of her manuscripts and, with her memoirist and nonfiction author husband Steven, is reissuing some of the titles under her own Ascendant Press. So in addition to everything else, she’s president and treasurer of a publishing house.

The next chapters of the Angel saga, which she describes as “Star Wars meets Hunger Games but racy,” come out later this year and early next: Renegade Angel on December 1 and Atomic Angel in February. Information about all the Navarre titles is here: lauranavarrescifi.com.

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Biodefense

Schar School News November 2021

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