COVID Vaccine Research & Deployment: Reconciling Speed & Safety

Nicole Lurie, MD, MSPH, is currently the Strategic Advisor to the CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiatives (CEPI). She is also a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, a member of the research faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine. She served an 8-year term as Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In that role, she led the HHS response to public health emergencies ranging from infectious disease to natural and man-made disasters. She also chaired the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, a government-wide organization ultimately responsible for the development of medical countermeasures, including vaccines against pandemics and emerging threats. Prior to federal service, she was the Paul O'Neill Professor of Policy Analysis at RAND, where she led the public health preparedness program and RAND's Center for Population Health and Health Disparities. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Seema K. Shah, JD, Associate Professor in Pediatrics at Northwestern University Medical School, Founder’s Board Professor of Medical Ethics, and Associate Director of Research Ethics at Lurie Children’s Hospital, is an expert in the fields of pediatric ethics, global health research ethics, and the ethics of controlled human infection studies. She received her legal training at Stanford University, then clerked in a federal district court. Prof. Shah was previously on faculty at the University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Hospital and at the NIH Clinical Center Department of Bioethics. She has chaired an NIH committee on ethical considerations in conducting human challenge trials for vaccines.

Margaret Hamburg, MD, is an internationally recognized leader in public health, medicine, and science. Dr. Hamburg was the twenty-first Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, where she was known for advancing regulatory science, modernizing regulatory pathways, and globalizing the agency. Most recently, she served as Foreign Secretary for the National Academies. Other past positions include Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation, Health Commissioner for New York City, and Assistant Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH. Dr. Hamburg is immediate past President and Board Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and serves on numerous other nonprofit boards and advisory councils.