Scientific Vision of the Center

Our APPEX Center, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, will meaningfully advance pandemic science as a multidisciplinary effort.

We will help ensure that the vision of pandemic science is not simply about filling in knowledge gaps but is about framing how to meet complex challenges, improving both our ability to respond to existing disease threats and to be flexible, nimble, and adaptable to the next emerging pathogen we cannot yet anticipate.
How We Work


Everything about APPEX is focused on multidisciplinary science.


Our core team is already hugely diverse and our protocol for involving outside participants in our Working Groups ensures we can recruit additional expertise whenever we discover a gap or whenever a gap-filler finds us!


The APPEX Center focuses on enabling multidisciplinary collaborations specifically focused on combinatorial risk scenarios that need simultaneous consideration by multiple academic domains and disciplines.



Develop rigorous hierarchy of evidence for pandemic risk

Provide improved methodologies for scenario-to-scenario comparison

Create and meet audacious challenges in multidisciplinary hypothesis generation, model/tool building, and information infrastructure

Leadership Team

Nina H. Fefferman

University of TN, Knoxville

PI / Director

Ivy Worsham

University of TN, Knoxville

Deputy Director of Operations

Lydia Bourouiba

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Assoc. Director for Translation, Impact and Policy

K. Selcuk Candan

Arizona State University

Assoc. Director for Technology, Cyberinfrastructure and Tech Transfer

Sadie Ryan

University of Florida

Assoc. Director for Core and Working Group Research Efforts

Elizabeth Strand

University of TN, Knoxville

Assoc. Director for Consilience Facilitation

Shelby Wilson

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab

Assoc. Director for Education, Training, Outreach and Participation

   

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2412115. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation