Two Biodefense Students Earn Prestigious Fellowship

Two students from George Mason University’s Biodefense program have been named Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity (ELBI) for 2016 by the UPMC Center for Health Security, the leading think tank in the United States in the fields of biodefense and global health security. Francisco Cruz, a 2015 graduate of the master’s program in Biodefense, and Siddha Hover, a current PhD student in Biodefense, have earned this highly competitive fellowship.

Hover currently works at the Department of Homeland Security as a Treaty Analyst, a role in which she received a Memorandum of Commendation from the DHS Deputy Secretary. She also received an M.S. in Biodefense at Mason and a master’s in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

“I was honored to be selected as an ELBI fellow,” Hover said, “especially given the caliber of previous fellowship cohorts.”

Cruz is a biologist in the Field Operations Branch of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Consequence Management Advisory Division (CBRN CMAD). He provides emergency response and decontamination support and expertise to federal, state, and local responders facing a biological incident.

“I am honored to be selected as an ELBI fellow,” said Cruz. “Being an ELBI fellow will not only provide me access to the most current information in the field, but also connect me to future leaders as we tackle increasingly complex issues in biosecurity.”

The ELBI Fellowship is structured around two weeklong trips to Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. There will be several webinars throughout the year in specific topics of interest. Fellows will participate in a writing competition focusing on a biosecurity topic of their choice. The D.C. trip included talks from leaders at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as well as a trip to the White House and Fort Detrick, the premier biodefense research center in the United States.

“The fellowship is already proving to be of great value to my career, and how I approach future biosecurity studies,” Cruz said. “Just with the first few seminars, I have been able to connect with other federal and private sector partners to hear the challenges they face. There is a good chance these connections will yield to some valuable partnerships that will not only advance research in some critical areas of biosecurity, but ensure the collaboration addresses the missions of several stakeholders.”

As part of their commitment to foster future leaders in the field of biosecurity, UPMC selected 28 U.S. and international emerging leaders in biosecurity from a wide array of backgrounds, including biological science, medicine, policy, the military, law, public health and the private sector.

“For two George Mason Biodefense students to be selected for this prestigious fellowship is a great recognition of the contribution that our students and alums are already making to biodefense and global health security and the potential they have to play even stronger roles in the future,” said Associate Professor Gregory D. Koblentz, director of the Biodefense program in Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government.

“Biodefense is kind of odd in that it’s a very specific, niche field that also happens to encompass a dozen or so subfields,” said Hover. “I think the ELBI Fellowship does a great job of recognizing the importance of selecting fellows from across all these different fields and opening up lines of communication between them. I think that making these cross-sectoral connections is incredibly helpful for really any career, but especially one in Biodefense.”

The Biodefense Program at George Mason University, established in 2003, is an interdisciplinary research and education program with a unique focus on the critical challenges at the nexus of health, science, and security. According to Professor Koblentz, the program prepares students to assess the risks posed by biological threats from anthrax to Zika and help devise innovative, science-based policies to reduce these threats.

To learn more about Mason’s Biodefense program, visit the Pandora Report.