Nahid Bhadelia | Founding Director, CEID; Founding Director, BEACON; Associate Professor, Infectious Diseases
Boston University

Dr. Bhadelia is the founding director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. She is a board-certified infectious diseases physician and an Associate Professor at the BU School of Medicine. She served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID-19 Response for the White House COVID-19 Response Team in 2022-2023, where she coordinated the interagency programs for global COVID-19 vaccine donations from the United States and was the White House policy lead for Project NextGen, $5B HHS program aimed at developing next generation vaccines and treatments for pandemic prone coronaviruses. She also served as the interim Testing Coordinator for the White House MPOX Response Team. She is the Founding Director and co-founder of Biothreats Emergence, Analysis and Communications Network (BEACON), an open-source outbreak surveillance program.  Between 2011-2021, Dr. Bhadelia helped develop and then served as the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit (SPU) at Boston Medical Center, a medical unit designed to care for patients with highly communicable diseases, and a state designated Ebola Treatment Center. She was previously an associate director for BU’s maximum containment research program, the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. She has provided direct patient care in Ebola treatment units and was part of outbreak response and medical countermeasures research during multiple Ebola virus disease outbreaks in West and East Africa between 2014-2019. She was the clinical lead for a DoD-funded viral hemorrhagic fever clinical research unit in Uganda, entitled Joint Mobile Emerging Disease Intervention Clinical Capability (JMEDICC) program between 2017 and 2022. She is a co-director of Fogarty funded, BU-University of Liberia Emerging and Epidemic Viruses Research training program.  She currently serves as a member of the National Academies Forum on Microbial Threats and the Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats.  She is also a member of the Pan American Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group on Epidemic and Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness, and serves as member of the Discovery, Research, Innovation for a Vibrant Economy Initiative team for Governor Maura Healey’s (MA) administration. She previously served as the chair of the National Academies Workshop Committee for Potential Research Priorities to Inform Readiness and Response to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) and member of the Ad Hoc Committee on Current State of Research, Development, and Stockpiling of Smallpox Medical Countermeasures. She was a member of the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Technical Advisory Group on Universal Health and Preparedness Review (UHPR).  Dr. Bhadelia’s research focuses on operational global health security and pandemic preparedness, including medical countermeasure evaluation and clinical care for emerging infections, diagnostics evaluation and positioning, infection control policy development, and healthcare worker training. She has health system response experience with pathogens such as H1N1, Zika, Lassa fever, Ebola and Marburg virus disease, and COVID-19 at the state, national, and global levels.