Students are returning to campus, commuters are heading back to the office, travel is picking up – as fall 2021 begins, the United States appears to be gradually returning to a “new normal” of sorts. But could the Delta variant and other strains of the coronavirus put this fragile balance at risk?
To kick off a new academic year for Perry World House’s weekly The World Today series, leading medical experts in vaccine development, epidemiology, and public health will discuss how COVID-19 variants arise, how effective current vaccines might be against them, and how public health measures may evolve as we learn to live with COVID-19.
Join us for a wide-ranging and in-depth conversation with Penn faculty Paul Offit and Susan Weiss, moderated by Perry World House Faculty Fellow Jennifer Pinto-Martin.
Perry World House is following the University of Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 guidelines (https://coronavirus.upenn.edu/). Please note that this event will now be VIRTUAL ONLY, with no option to attend in-person. You will need to use the Zoom details in your order confirmation email to take part. If you have any questions, please contact us at worldhouse@pwh.upenn.edu.
SPEAKERS
Paul Offit, M.D., is the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as well as the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and a Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recipient of many awards including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Disease Society of America, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Offit has published more than 160 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC in 2006 and by the WHO in 2013. Dr. Offit was a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is currently a member of the FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee and is a founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation and the Foundation for Vaccine Research. He is also the author of nine medical narratives, including his most recent Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far (HarperCollins, April, 2020), and You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccinations—The Long and Risky History of Medical Innovations (Basic Books, in press).
Susan Weiss obtained her Ph.D. in Microbiology from Harvard University working on paramyxoviruses and did postdoctoral training in retroviruses at University of California, San Francisco. She came to Penn as an Assistant Professor in 1980, and is currently Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Microbiology and Co-director of the Penn Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She previously served as Associate Dean for Biomedical Postdoc Programs (2010-2019). She has worked on many aspects of coronavirus replication and pathogenesis over the last forty years, making contributions to understanding the basic biology as well as viral entry, organ tropism and virulence. This work focused for many years on the murine coronavirus (MHV) mouse model of hepatitis. More recently she has work on SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV and since 2020 also on SARS-CoV-2. Her work for the last ten years has focused on coronavirus interaction with the host innate immune response and viral innate antagonists of double-stranded RNA induced antiviral pathways. Her other research interests include activation and antagonism of the double-stranded RNA induced antiviral responses, with a focus on the oligoadenylate-ribonuclease L (OAS-RNase L) pathway, flavivirus- primarily Zika- virus-host interactions and pathogenic effects of host endogenous dsRNA.
MODERATOR
Jennifer Pinto-Martin, MPH, Ph.D. is the Viola MacInnes/Independence Professor in the Biobehavioral Health Sciences in the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing with a secondary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine. She currently serves as the Ombuds for the University and the Executive Director of Penn’s Center for Public Health Initiatives. She is the former Director of the Master of Public Health Program and has served as both a Department Chair and Chair of the University Faculty Senate. She has been part of Penn’s COVID Response Team since the start of the pandemic and has been involved in all public health decisions related to COVID and the campus community.
