Event

On April 24 at 12:00PM ET the Pandemic Center will host a webinar titled: Optimizing Wastewater Surveillance to Detect Outbreaks and Track Diseases.

An important innovation that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic was the broader adoption of wastewater environmental surveillance (WES) as an important tool to supplement traditional surveillance approaches. Some predict that WES can be an all-encompassing method to detect outbreaks early, while others are concerned that the data are too non-specific and noisy to be actionable. Are either of these notions correct?

In this Pandemic Center webinar, we will discuss the current state of the field, utility and past use cases, and the potential of WES as an early warning system for infectious disease transmission, from endemic conditions like flu and COVID to reemerging pathogens like measles to possible future emerging pandemic threats. Please join us for this discussion with our expert panelists from academic, governmental, and private sectors for this discussion of WES in a national and international context.

Panel

Moderator: Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health

Speakers:

• Nicole Fehrenbach, Branch Chief for Rapid Response Research & Surveillance, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Abigail Paulos, Postdoctoral Fellow, Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health
• Jean Richards, Biosecurity Director, SICPA

This webinar is part of the Pandemics & Society series, which focuses on current pandemic threats and response systems as well as how to build preparedness for the future.

Please contact pandemic_center@brown.edu with any questions.

Register to attend this month's Pandemic's & Society Webinar

Student Event

On April 21 at 12pm ET, the Pandemic Center will present a workshop for students by Jason Gale, Senior Editor and Biosecurity Correspondent at Bloomberg News, titled: Designing the First 60 Days of the Next Pandemic: Early decisions, hidden trade-offs, and the long tail of a pandemic.

About this workshop

This workshop will challenge students to think beyond transmission and mortality, and to consider how early decisions shape a pandemic’s long-term health and societal consequences.

Drawing on lessons from Covid-19, we’ll explore how surges affect care delivery, the lasting burden of conditions like Long Covid, and how crisis-driven changes can create harms that persist well beyond the acute phase. The focus will be on trade-offs — what gets prioritized, what gets missed, and how a broader view of risk might change decisions early on.

This workshop is designed for Brown University students. Lunch will be provided for participants, please register by 4/17.

Please contact pandemic_center@brown.edu with any questions.

Stay tuned for info on future events!

On November 18, 2025, Craig Spencer, MD, MPH hosted Gabriella Stern for an event in the Public Health in Practice Seminar Series titled Health Communication as Essential Infrastructure for Global Health.

Stern’s career has spanned top-tier international journalism, philanthropy and public service. She led communications for the World Health Organization (WHO) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, developing high-stakes, high-profile strategies at the most consequential time in public health communications in living memory.

This Pandemic Center event, was part of Dr. Spencer’s Public Health in Practice Seminar Series, looked at the case that the period of 2020-2025 has made for a belated recognition of health communications as a global public good, one benefiting from proper financial investments, an enhanced research agenda to strengthen quality and impact, and strategic positioning at the heart of relevant sub national, national, regional and global institutions.

Highlights from this event are covered in an article from the School of Public Health.
Read here

The Pandemic Center partnered with the Private Sector Roundtable on Global Health Security, convening 20 senior business executives and leaders from across the country to discuss lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and pragmatic, replicable models to safeguard employees and boost state and local response to major health emergencies.

Businesses are essential partners in protecting public health and economic stability during crises, as demonstrated by a national initiative that united U.S. business leaders to share lessons from COVID-19 and develop practical models for future emergency response. 

More info here

Check out our former events here

Are you interested in or working on projects that address the local, national or global challenges of pandemics? Are you looking to meet others on campus who are committed to understanding, preventing, and managing the impacts of pandemics—whether through research, policy, healthcare, or community-based solutions? Curious about biosecurity or biosafety?

On Wednesday, April 2, the School of Public Health’s Pandemic Center hosted a Pandemics and Biosecurity Interest Group coffee meet-up to:

• Provide an opportunity to network with like-minded individuals and groups across campus

• Share insights on pandemic and biosecurity-related work happening at the University

• Foster potential research and grant-writing collaborations

• Explore interest in building a collaborative space for exchanging ideas, sharing resources, and developing actionable strategies against pandemics and biosecurity threats

If you attended or are interested in working with the Pandemic Center in the future, please fill out this form.

About the Presidential Faculty Award Lecture
The Presidential Faculty Award was established by President Christina H. Paxson in Spring 2013 to recognize members of Brown’s distinguished faculty who are conducting especially important and innovative scholarship. The 2025 Presidential Faculty Award Lecture  “Pandemic-Proofing the Future,” featured Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.

About the Lecture
In this talk, Jennifer Nuzzo will discuss how we can prevent, reduce vulnerabilities, and increase resilience to pandemics and other biological emergencies, and the harms they pose to health, security, and prosperity.

Read more about this even here

 We will update again when a video of the event is available
 

This event was on March 5, 2025 as a panel discussion moderated by Director of the Pandemic Center, Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH, S.M.

This discussion featured expert panelists reflecting on the valuable lessons learned and progress made since COVID-19 was characterized as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization and ask: What have we learned, what have we done, and how should we continue preparing for the next global pandemic?

Panelists:

• Adam Levine, Associate Dean of Biology and Medicine, Director of the Center for Global Health Equity, Professor of Emergency Medicine
• Theresa Raimondo, Assistant Professor of Engineering
• Scott Rivkees, Associate Dean for Education in the School of Public Health, Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice
• Larry Warner, Chief Impact and Equity Officer at United Way of Rhode Island, President of the Rhode Island Public Health Association, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice

This was an in-person event.

Brown Daily Herald wrote an article on this event that can be read here