Professor Kari Nadeau is the Naddisy Foundation Endowed Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics and Director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University. In addition, she is the Section Chief in Asthma and Allergy in the Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Division at Stanford and the Senior Director of Clinical Research for the Division of Stanford Medicine Hospitals. Throughout her career, she has been a pioneer in the field of Translational Allergy and Immunology, both defining the mechanisms of new therapies and then translating them clinically to make transformative changes in patient care. Furthermore, she has led research in oncology, transplant and autoimmune trials and is a member of the National Steering Committee for the intramural clinical research programs at the NIH. She has also started four biotech companies in the Bay Area under Stanford patents and has worked in industry to lead two drugs through the FDA to approval. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, she led one of the key successful NIH NIAID-funded Remdesivir clinical trials as a potential therapeutic for SARS-CoV-2. On April 29th, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of NIH and a current member of the US Coronavirus Task Force, announced that Remdesivir will become the “new standard of care” for COVID-19.

Dr. Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, poet, medical doctor and author. Disease does not spread alone – it spreads in tandem with health hoaxes, medical myths and pseudoscience. Information is contagious. The same mathematical models used to track the spread of a virus can be used to track the spread of information that goes viral. Dr. Seema Yasmin, a former Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the CDC and current director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative, talks about misinfodemics in the age of COVID-19, including potential measures to stop misinformation contagion.

Live recording from the webinar on Wednesday 13th May 2020. The first in a series of online talks organised by the Oxford University Personalised Medicine (OUPM) Society. We are pleased to host Dr. Amesh Adalja, who will be presenting his talk, “The Characteristics of Pandemic Pathogens.” Dr. Adalja is a senior infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health where he is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity. Dr. Adalja has served on multiple US government committees tasked with establishing innovative guidelines for treatment and healthcare reform during infectious disease emergencies. He is also a board-certified physician in internal medicine, emergency medicine, infectious diseases, and critical care medicine. In addition, he is a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American College of Physicians, and the American College of Emergency Physicians.