Exploring the Potential and Contribution of Waste for Reaching Zero Net Energy and Zero Landfill-waste at UC Merced

Current global disease control efforts focus largely on attempting to stop pandemics after they have already emerged. This fire brigade approach, which generally involves drugs, vaccines, and behavioral change, has severe limitations. Just as we discovered in the 1960s that it is better to prevent heart attacks than try to treat them, over the next 50 years we will realize that it is better to stop pandemics before they spread and that effort should increasingly be focused on viral forecasting and pandemic prevention.

Dr. Wolfe will discuss how novel viruses enter into the human population from animals and go on to become pandemics. He will also discuss attempts by his own research group to study this process and attempt to control viruses that have only recently emerged. By creating a global network at the interface of humans and animals, he and his group are working to move viral forecasting from a theoretical possibility to a reality.

Dr. Wolfe is the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University and director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative. He received his bachelor's degree from Stanford in 1993 and his doctorate in Immunology & Infectious Diseases from Harvard in 1998. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship in 1997, Dr. Wolfe was awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) International Research Scientist Development Award in 1999 and the prestigious NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2005.

Room 101