On July 17th at 12:00PM ET the Pandemic Center will host a webinar titled: Mirror Biology: Global risks, national security concerns, and practical actions.

Last year, a group of scientists including two Nobel Laureates and 16 members of national academies from around the world published a warning against building a technology that some of them had spent years working toward: mirror bacteria. Mirror bacteria are hypothetical synthetic organisms built from mirror-image forms of the proteins, amino acids, DNA, and other biomolecules used by life on earth. In an analysis published in Science, the group argued that such organisms could be built within the next 10 to 30 years and could pose an extraordinary threat if they were.

The analysis is that mirror bacteria could be resistant to many mechanisms of immunity in humans, nonhuman animals, and possibly plants. They could also be resistant to the predators that keep populations of wild bacteria in check. It’s plausible, then, that mirror bacteria could act as an invasive species, causing fatal infections as they spread and irreversibly disrupting ecosystems in the process.

While the threat is not imminent—scientists cannot yet make mirror-image versions of all the components that would be needed to create a mirror bacterium, and no researchers have successfully booted up a normal bacterium from entirely nonliving parts—the questions raised by mirror biology are pressing. What are the risks and challenges posed by mirror biology to global health, national security, and international collaboration and what practical steps can be taken to stop those risks from developing?

To discuss these issues, Pandemic Center Senior Adviser Wilmot James, Ph.D, himself a co-author of the Science analysis, will convene a panel of experts including:

• Beth Cameron, Ph.D., Senior Adviser to the Pandemic Center, Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health
• James Smith, DPhil, Adjunct Associate Professor at the J. Craig Venter Institute and the Deputy Director of the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund and fellow co-author of the Science analysis

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 Here

Stay tuned for info on future events!

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

Women denied abortions under Texas’ ambiguous and unforgiving abortion bans band together with a fearless attorney to sue Texas. While battling in court against the state and its immovable Attorney General, the extent of their traumatic experiences is revealed as they wrestle to regain their reproductive futures and set a precedent for millions of other women and families. ZURAWSKI V TEXAS reveals the dire impact of losing access to healthcare—and the extraordinary efforts of the women and men fighting on the frontline to regain those rights.

Reception and screening were followed by a panel and community discussion with the filmmakers, Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, and Brown School of Public Health and Alpert Medical School Associate Professor Liz Tobin-Tyler.

Our Storied Health Film and Media Series is a year-long integrated media experience that illuminates the importance of our collective health and what can be done to enhance it. Through film screenings, campus conversations, and how-to workshops, this series showcases the power of storytelling as a public health intervention. The Series is curated by Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Center of the Brown School of Public Health, with epidemiologist and documentary filmmaker Dr. Jennifer Galvin ’95

The Pandemic Center welcomeed Tyler Franconi, Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Classics as well as the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World, to the School of Public Health on December 3rd to present his talk: Archaeological Perspectives on the Study of Pandemics in the Roman World.

Professor Franconi’s talk focused on the three main pandemic events in the Roman world, as known from historical sources, what archaeology has added to these narratives, and what else it might yet add in the future.

Tyler Franconi is a Roman archaeologist whose research focuses on the economic and environmental history of the Roman Empire, especially in Western Europe. He co-directs the Upper Sabina Tiberina Project in central Italy, and is a specialist in Roman small finds and ceramics.

A summary of the event is posted on this page!

Power of the Dream is a new documentary film about the empowering and unlikely true story of how a group of professional women's basketball players took on a WNBA team owner and rallied behind now-Senator Raphael Warnock, forever changing the landscape of their sport and the course of U.S. politics. Following a reception a panel was hosted and featured the film’s director and producer Dawn Porter, an award-winning filmmaker, founder of the production company Trilogy Films, and a recipient of a 2023 National Humanities Medal; and Dr. Lucia Hulsether, a 2024-25 Senior Fellow in Race and Ethnicity at Brown and an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College.

Our Storied Health Film and Media Series is a year-long integrated media experience that illuminates the importance of our collective health and what can be done to enhance it. Through film screenings, campus conversations, and how-to workshops, this series showcases the power of storytelling as a public health intervention. The Series is curated by Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Center of the Brown School of Public Health, with epidemiologist and documentary filmmaker Dr. Jennifer Galvin ’95.

Thank you to all who attended or watched online.

The American Democracy and Health Security Initiative's website, which includes hundreds of stories from pandemic lamplighters and the urgent recommendations that were learned from them, is NOW LIVE.

Governors Asa Hutchinson and Deval Patrick wrote this opinion piece about the effort, published in STAT News.

The launch can be viewed in full here, and the event's original media advisory, posted in advance, follows:

View the event's agenda here.

Original event description follows:

The American Democracy and Health Security Initiative, bringing together the Brown University School of Public Health Pandemic Center, the COVID Collaborative, and the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security, will release on Wednesday, June 5th, the findings of a groundbreaking, grassroots examination of America’s pandemic “lamplighters,” who innovated and bridged divides to illuminate the path forward in America’s darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Democracy and Health Security Initiative spotlights these state and local lamplighters and harvests their hard-won lessons to ensure the most successful strategies can be sustained or replicated in future crises.

The findings, and urgent recommendations for action, will be the focus of a special forum at 2:00 pm ET on Wednesday, June 5th, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.

Confirmed Speakers

April 3, 2024: Anonymous Sister Film Screening and Panel Discussion

Granoff Center for the Creative Arts | Presented by the Brown Arts Institute and the the Pandemic Center

“AN INTIMATE LOOK AT WHO WE SEE AT THE HEART OF ADDICTION.” – NPR

When a young woman turns to the camera for refuge, she ends up with a firsthand account of what will become the deadliest man-made epidemic in United States history. Thirty years in the making, Anonymous Sister is Emmy Award®-winning director, Jamie Boyle’s chronicle of her family’s collision with the opioid epidemic.

The screening was followed by a panel and community discussion with filmmaker Jamie Boyle, addiction specialist Dr. Josiah “Jody” Rich, and epidemiologist Dr. Alexandria Macmadu.

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Jamie Boyle is a two-time Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has played at Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW. Most recently, Boyle wrote and edited Breaking The News, which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and currently airs on PBS. Her feature directorial debut, Anonymous Sister, was shortlisted for the 2023 IDA Best Documentary Award and opened to critical acclaim in theaters June 2023. Produced by Big Mouth Productions (Dick Johnson Is Dead) and Vulcan Productions (Summer of Soul), Boyle directed, filmed, and edited Anonymous Sister, a chronicle of her family’s collision with the opioid epidemic that spans over three decades.

Dr. Josiah “Jody” Rich, MD, MPH is a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Brown. Rich is a practicing infectious disease and addiction specialist providing care to patients at The Miriam Hospital and the Rhode Island Department of Corrections since 1994. He has advocated for public health policy changes to improve the health of people with addiction, including improving legal access to sterile syringes and increasing drug treatment for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations. More recently he has focused on addressing the opioid overdose epidemic. Rich has testified in congress multiple times and served as an expert advisor to the Rhode Island Governor’s Overdose Task Force since its inception in 2015.

Dr. Alexandria “Alex” Macmadu, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and a member of thePeople, Place and Health Collective (PPHC) at Brown. Macmadu is a substance use epidemiologist and her program of research: (1) examines the social determinants of drug use and overdose; (2) investigates evidence-based approaches to mitigate drug-related harms; and (3) advances justice and health equity in marginalized subgroups, including BIPOC communities, people who use drugs, and persons affected by the criminal legal system. Macmadu is a multi-Brown alumna, having received her PhD in epidemiology (’22), her MSc in behavioral and social sciences (’15), and her BA in ethics (’14).

––––––––––––

Anonymous Sister

94 minutes / USA / 2023
https://www.anonymoussister.com/

“Searing, achingly personal… an impressive feat of editing.” – Roger Ebert

“An authenticity and personal investment that few films on this subject could match.” – Film Threat

“A full-on cinematic disquisition on the terrible, rippling side effects and consequences of the pharmaceutical industry’s greed, which in turn reflects capitalistic rapaciousness more broadly.” – Golden Globes

Pandemic Center Interview: Reed V. Tuckson M.D., FACP

Pandemic Center director Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH, and Reed V. Tuckson M.D., FACP, managing director of Tuckson Health Connections, LLC, discussed his work, the impact of the COVID pandemic on public health, and the importance of rebuilding trust in science.

Tuckson Health Connections, LLC, is an organization dedicated to promoting health and preventing disease through innovative approaches in data analytics, care delivery efficiency, telehealth and biotech. Dr. Tuckson is also a co-founder of the Black Coalition Against COVID, leading efforts to combat the recent pandemic in Washington, D.C. and across the country.

See this page for key takeaways from Dr. Tuckson.

February 5, 2024

The second installment of the Pandemic Center’s “Our Storied Health” series highlights environmental injustice in the American South, and explores the potential of storytelling to advance public health.

Read the full article about this event from the Brown University School of Public Health. 

Mossville: When Great Trees Fall
55 minutes / USA / 2019
http://www.mossvilleproject.com/

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Strengthening Capabilities to Manage and Respond to Biological Threats

Signature Initiative to Mitigate Biological Threats in Africa (G7-led Global Partnership and Africa CDC) and the University of the Witwatersrand

Venue: 1.6.1 – 1.6.4 Cape Town International Convention Centre 1

Date: Friday, 15th December 2023 Time: 07:00 – 09:00 am SAST

In the context of a major push to finalise a WHO convention on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, a convening to provide an update on the implementation of the Signature Initiative to Mitigate Biological Threats in Africa supported initiatives in the domain of biosecurity and biosafety and the socialization of a policy brief on Strengthening Capacity and Capability for the Identification, Attribution and Consequent Management of Accidental and Deliberate Pathogen Releases in Africa. The 2-hour long convening will be organized into 3 sessions with presentation and discussion slots, bookended by opening and concluding remarks.

Co-Chairs: Zeblon Vilakazi (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa); and Yenew Kebede (Africa CDC, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia).

Free for registrants of the ASLM conference, day visitors can attend for a fee.

Original event description follows:

Our Storied Health Film and Media Series is a year-long integrated media experience that illuminates the importance of our collective health and what can be done to enhance it. The series, curated by Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown School of Public Health and Dr. Jennifer Galvin ’95, an epidemiologist and documentary filmmaker, opens with a screening of “Shot in the Arm,” a film by Scott Hamilton Kennedy.

Through film screenings, campus conversations, and how-to workshops, this series showcases the power of storytelling as a public health intervention. The Series is curated by Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Center of the Brown School of Public Health, with epidemiologist and documentary filmmaker
Dr. Jennifer Galvin ’95.

Scott Hamilton Kennedy (THE GARDEN, FOOD EVOLUTION) had begun investigating the global measles epidemic. It was long before anyone had heard of COVID-19. He was filming with top public health officials–including Tony Fauci–as well as rare interviews with anti-vaccine activists who were persuading parents by the millions to refuse vaccines for their children. Then COVID-19 happened. Acting quickly, Kennedy shifted his directorial eye to this once-in-a-century tragedy. Both skeptical and hopeful, SHOT IN THE ARM explores vaccine hesitancy historically and in the context of our modern pandemic. Can we replace cynicism with healthy curiosity and bridge the political divides that make us sick?

Our Storied Health Film and Media Series will include film screenings, campus conversations, and how-to workshops to showcase the power of storytelling as a public health intervention. The screening will begin with a panel discussion and a reception will follow.

Registration (free) is required.

This event is part of Brown Arts IGNITE Series.