Preparing for Bioterrorism: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Leadership in Biosecurity

With the 2001 anthrax attacks, the threat of bioterrorism became real to the nation. Before that, biological weapons were a known threat to warfighters, but after, the vulnerability of US civilians was clear. It was also clear that the US government was not organized to address the national security and civilian threat of bioweapons. Only a handful of civilian experts were involved, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation was the only US philanthropy willing to commit resources to confront the challenges of preparing for bioterrorism. When Sloan got involved in 2000, the professional field of biosecurity did not exist. There was little science or scholarship. There were no guidelines or planning tools and few policies or officials to direct civilian preparedness, planning, and response. Over ten years, the Sloan Foundation awarded more than $44 million in biosecurity grants and was instrumental in establishing the field and many of its most prominent leaders. That was money well-invested. The nation is now vastly better prepared for bioterrorism and other catastrophic threats to the public's health and national security. Author Gigi Kwik Gronvall chronicles the foundation's leadership in the field and the innovations that followed to show how the Sloan Foundation help to build the foundation on which US civilian biosecurity now stands.

Author Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD, an immunologist by training, has been a scholar in biosecurity since 2000, when she was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Associate at USAMRIID in Fort Detrick, Maryland. She was a founding member of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies in 2001, and has been a Senior Associate with the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC since its inception in 2003. Although Dr. Gronvall’s research addresses an array of topics in biosecurity and biodefense, she has focused on characterizing the role of scientists in biodefense and defining responsible policy for governance of science. She has also published extensively on the challenges of developing medical countermeasures for biodefense. Dr. Gronvall has testified before the US Congress on the safety and security of high-containment biological laboratories in the United States, served as the Science Advisor of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism from April 2009 until the commission ended in February 2010, and investigated and presented policy recommendations on the governance of science to the 2003, 2005, and 2006 Biological Weapons Conventions in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Gronvall received her BS in biology from Indiana University, Bloomington, and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University.