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Saskia Popescu

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Saskia Popescu
Alma materUniversity of Arizona (BA, Classics; MPH, Public health; MA, International security)
George Mason University (PhD, Biodefense)
Occupation(s)Global health security and pathogen preparedness expert, infectious disease epidemiologist
Scientific career
FieldsEpidemiology, Biosecurity, Biodefense, International security
InstitutionsUniversity of Arizona, George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government
ThesisHow Cost Containment Undermines Disease Containment: Political and Economic Obstacles to Investing in Infection Prevention and Control (2019)

Saskia Popescu is an infectious disease epidemiologist and global health security expert in Phoenix, Arizona. She is an Assistant Professor of epidemiology at the University of Maryland, and holds academic appointments at the University of Arizona and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, where she lectures on biopreparedness and outbreak response. Since the start of the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, Popescu has worked to prepare for and mitigate the spread of the disease within healthcare and the entertainment industry, where she led the global epidemiology and infection prevention response for Netflix. She has been recognized for her communication efforts around the pandemic, as well as her work on the front lines in infection prevention and healthcare biopreparedness. Popescu currently is a Policy Researcher at RAND Corporation, addressing converging biological risks from biological weapons nonproliferation, biosecurity, emerging infectious diseases and ecological security, biopreparedness in private industry, and global health security vulnerabilities.

Education

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Popescu received her Bachelor of Arts degree in classics from the University of Arizona in 2008. Her senior thesis evaluated the impact of infectious disease on the fall of the Roman Empire. She then attended the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health for graduate school, receiving her Master of Public Health degree in infectious disease epidemiology 2011. Following this, she received a Master of Arts in International Security Studies in 2013 from the University of Arizona. Popescu then attended a graduate program at George Mason University to pursue her doctoral degree in biodefense.[1] There, her research centered on global health security. Her doctoral dissertation centered on the economic and political roadblocks for the utilization of infection prevention efforts in the United States.[2] During her graduate work, she was recognized by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security as an Emerging Leader in Biosecurity Initiative fellow.[3]

Career

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Popescu's research centers on pandemic preparedness and global health security, working to prepare hospitals and advising policymakers for outbreaks of infectious diseases.[4][5] She is an assistant professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona teaching biodefense. In 2015, she was involved in the response to an outbreak of measles in Maricopa County, Arizona and is currently involved in the response to Coronavirus disease 2019.[6][7] In January 2020, before COVID-19 cases spiked in the United States, she warned of the consequences for cutting funding for hospitals that are equipped to respond to infectious disease outbreaks based on her research studying failures in pandemic response.[8] Popescu is a biosecurity and defense/political science Policy Researcher at RAND Corporation and previous consulted for the World Health Organization on COVID-19 Infection Prevention.

COVID-19 Pandemic

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Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Popescu has been working to prepare hospitals for cases of COVID-19 and communicating about the disease to the public through a number of channels.[5] Popescu has worked within Arizona hospital systems to better prepare the hospital system for a surge in COVID-19 cases and advised public health officials on mitigation approaches.[9][10] She serves on several national committees to monitor and respond to COVID-19, including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Committee on Data Needs to Monitor the Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and the Federation of American Scientists' Coronavirus Task Force.[11] She frequently published on transmission dynamics and roadblocks in prevention.[12][13][14] In 2023, she was part of the research team working in COVID origins analysis, publishing data from the Huanan market regarding zoonotic origins of the virus.[15][16] Popescu served as the lead epidemiologist and infection preventionist for Netflix during the pandemic, building global response plans and mitigation strategies on productions.[17]

Popescu has also leveraged social media as a tool to communicate information about the pandemic and has been noted as a top expert to follow for reliable information.[4] Her writing has also appeared in popular news outlets, including an Op-ed published in July in The Washington Post outlining how Arizona became a COVID-19 hotspot by not following the measures recommended by epidemiologists and public health officials.[18] Popescu has also co-authored Op-eds on vaccine passports and COVID origins.[19][20] She also co-authored an editorial for The New York Times with Ezekiel Emanuel and James Phillips outlining a strategy to safely reopen schools.[21] She and Phillips have also developed a color-coded chart to better help members of the public navigate risk around COVID-19 and make better-informed decisions about which activities to partake in.[22] She has also spoken about the gender disparity in experts included in coverage around the pandemic, noting that men with less expertise are often cited more than women.[23]

Global Health Security

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Prior to and following the COVID-19 pandemic, Popescu worked to address vulnerabilities within global health security, specifically in infection prevention infrastructure and biodefense, as well as biological weapons attribution capacity and outbreak response. She has written on the importance of bridging communities to combat gaps in biosecurity governance and supported the presence of non-governmental organizations (NGO) within the Biological Weapons Convention.[24] Popescu has warned of the vulnerabilities to antimicrobial resistance and the importance of addressing private industry resilience and readiness for biological threats, including commercial space, entertainment, and biotechnology.[25][26]

Awards and honors

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References

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  1. ^ "Drawn to Germs at an Early Age, Biodefense Scholar Studies Where Science Meets Policy | Schar School of Policy and Government". schar.gmu.edu. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  2. ^ Popescu, Saskia (2019). How Cost Containment Undermines Disease Containment: Political and Economic Obstacles to Investing in Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) (Thesis). hdl:1920/12273.
  3. ^ a b Alexopulos, Nick. "Class of 2017 from the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Fellowship". Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  4. ^ a b "50 Experts to Trust in a Pandemic". Medium. 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  5. ^ a b Yong, Ed (2020-07-07). "The Pandemic Experts Are Not Okay". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  6. ^ "Notes from the Field: Lack of Measles Transmission to Susceptible Contacts from a Health Care Worker with Probable Secondary Vaccine Failure — Maricopa County, Arizona, 2015". www.cdc.gov. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  7. ^ "Arizona Uptick In COVID-19 Cases A Lesson For Us All". www.wbur.org. 6 July 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  8. ^ "Outbreaks of lethal diseases like Ebola and the Wuhan coronavirus happen regularly. The US government just cut funding for the hospitals that deal with them". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 2020-01-22. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  9. ^ "Coronavirus Surge: How States Are Responding To A Spike In Cases". www.wbur.org. 8 July 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  10. ^ "How To Stay Safe And Healthy As Coronavirus Cases Rise : 1A". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  11. ^ Committee Biosketches. National Academies Press (US). 2020-07-31.
  12. ^ Rasmussen, Angela L.; Popescu, Saskia V. (2021-03-19). "SARS-CoV-2 transmission without symptoms". Science. 371 (6535): 1206–1207. Bibcode:2021Sci...371.1206R. doi:10.1126/science.abf9569. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 33737476.
  13. ^ Escandón, Kevin; Rasmussen, Angela L.; Bogoch, Isaac I.; Murray, Eleanor J.; Escandón, Karina; Popescu, Saskia V.; Kindrachuk, Jason (December 2021). "COVID-19 false dichotomies and a comprehensive review of the evidence regarding public health, COVID-19 symptomatology, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, mask wearing, and reinfection". BMC Infectious Diseases. 21 (1): 710. doi:10.1186/s12879-021-06357-4. ISSN 1471-2334. PMC 8314268. PMID 34315427.
  14. ^ Popescu, Saskia (August 2020). "Roadblocks to Infection Prevention Efforts in Health Care: SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 Response". Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. 14 (4): 538–540. doi:10.1017/dmp.2020.55. ISSN 1935-7893. PMC 7156573. PMID 32223774.
  15. ^ Wu, Katherine J. (2023-03-21). "A Major Clue to COVID's Origins Is Just Out of Reach". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
  16. ^ Crits-Christoph, Alexander; Levy, Joshua I.; Pekar, Jonathan E.; Goldstein, Stephen A.; Singh, Reema; Hensel, Zach; Gangavarapu, Karthik; Rogers, Matthew B.; Moshiri, Niema (2023-09-14). Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic (Report). Genomics. doi:10.1101/2023.09.13.557637. PMC 10515900. PMID 37745602.
  17. ^ Gee, Dana (2021-03-12). "Hollywood North: One year later, moving forward looks good". Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 2024-08-14.
  18. ^ Popescu, Saskia (2020-07-16). "Arizona reopened too fast. Epidemiologists knew it, but we couldn't stop it". The Washington Post.
  19. ^ Popescu, Saskia; Phelan, Alexandra (2021-03-22). "Opinion | Vaccine Passports Won't Get Us Out of the Pandemic". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
  20. ^ "Opinion | Available evidence still points to covid originating from spillover". Washington Post. 2023-03-13. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
  21. ^ Emanuel, Ezekiel J.; Popescu, Saskia; Phillips, James (2020-07-29). "Opinion | Opening Schools Won't Be Easy, but Here's How to Do It Safely". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  22. ^ McKenna, Maryn (2020-07-21). "To Navigate Risk In a Pandemic, You Need a Color-Coded Chart". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  23. ^ Berger, Miriam. "Women are systematically excluded from global coronavirus coverage, experts say". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  24. ^ Rasmussen, Saskia Popescu, Yong-Bee Lim, Angela (2023-07-21). "Gain-of-function research is about much more than dangerous pathogens". STAT. Retrieved 2024-01-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  25. ^ Popescu, Saskia (2019-11-02). "The existential threat of antimicrobial resistance". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 75 (6): 286–289. Bibcode:2019BuAtS..75f.286P. doi:10.1080/00963402.2019.1680053. ISSN 0096-3402. S2CID 210537753.
  26. ^ Pugel, Betsy; Popescu, Saskia; Madad, Syra (2020-04-01). "Restricted and Uncontained: Health Considerations in the Event of Loss of Containment During the Restricted Earth Return of Extraterrestrial Samples". Health Security. 18 (2): 132–138. doi:10.1089/hs.2019.0088. ISSN 2326-5094. PMID 32324071. S2CID 216084547.
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