Marion Koopmans | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | Utrecht University |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | National Institute for Public Health and the Environment Erasmus MC |
Thesis | Diagnosis and epidemiology of torovirus infections in cattle (1990) |
Maria Petronella Gerarda Koopmans [1] (born 21 September 1956) is a Dutch virologist who is Head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience. Her research considers emerging infectious diseases, noroviruses and veterinary medicine. In 2018 she was awarded the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Stevin Prize. She serves on the scientific advisory group of the World Health Organization.
Koopmans studied veterinary medicine at Utrecht University. [2] She graduated from her Master's degree 1976, and remained there for her doctoral research. She earned two graduate degrees in veterinary medicine, and was officially registered as a veterinary microbiologist in 1977. She became increasingly interested in virology, and moved to the United States to specialise in viruses that can be transmitted between animals and humans. [3] From 1991 to 1994 Koopmans completed a fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she studied enteric viruses. [2]
Koopmans joined the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), where she was appointed Chief of Virology. She was involved with restructuring the department, and translating their research out of the laboratory and into practical applications for the control of infectious diseases. In 2006 she was appointed as Professor of Public Health at the Erasmus MC hospital in Rotterdam, which allowed her to strengthen the evidence-base of infectious disease research. Her laboratory makes use of basic scientific studies and epidemiology to understand the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, to establish their transmission routes and to translate this research base into diagnostic tools.
In 2003, when Influenza A virus subtype H7N7 spread around the Netherlands, Koopmans experienced her first infectious diseases outbreak. She was involved with the development of a coordinated public response, working with veterinarians and physicians to quickly develop public health policy. Her experiences in leading the response to the avian influenza outbreak prepared her for subsequent epidemics, including Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and Zika virus. She was on the team that found, in 2013, that dromedary camels were an intermediate host for the virus that causes MERS. [4] She has since worked with Elmoubasher Farag to test camels for antibodies against MERS. [4]
During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Koopmans was responsible for the deployment of mobile laboratories in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Her Erasmus MC team trained volunteers to run testing and treatment programmes. [5] Koopmans is a member of the scientific advisory group (SAG) of the World Health Organization's R&D Blueprint project. [6] The project looks to understand what has gone wrong with epidemic and pandemic responses, and looks to build global disease preparedness. [6] As part of this effort, Koopmans analysed the public health response to the Zika virus. She identified three significant bottlenecks to an efficient response; including delays in regulatory approvals, challenges in the logistics of laboratory support and the absence of a structured timeline for funding. [7] Koopmans also leads the World Health Organization centre for Emerging Viral Diseases. [8] She is the scientific coordinator of COMPARE, a Horizon 2020 project that looks to develop next generation sequencing techniques for outbreak identification and mapping. [9] COMPARE look to contain and mitigate foodborne illnesses. [9]
In 2018 Koopmans was honoured by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for her work on the transfer of viruses from animals to humans. [10] In 2019 she was awarded a $9 million NWO grant to establish a consortium, the Versatile Emerging infectious disease Observatory (VEO), that will study how changes in environment and travel will impact the risk of infectious diseases. [11] [12] The diseases considered by VEO include vector-borne and zoonotic diseases, as well as hidden pathogens. [13] Koopmans wrote an article for Nature in which she called for a transformation in epidemic preparedness and response. [14] In the article, she quoted the World Health Organization's leader on health emergencies, "We are entering a very new phase of high-impact epidemics… This is a new normal." [15] In 2019 Koopmans was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. [16]
From the start of 2020, Koopmans worked to understand SARS-CoV-2 and the spread of coronavirus disease. [3] [17] [18] In the Netherlands, Koopmans made an effort to test healthcare workers, and identified that there were large numbers of asymptomatic carriers amongst the Dutch population. [19] With her team at the Erasmus MC, Koopmans looked to understand the efficacy of antibody tests. [20] [21] Alongside leading the scientific response, Koopmans was also involved with scientific communication about the virus, making use of social media and media interviews to share up-to-date research with the public. [22] [23] Koopmans said that as humans occupied more of planet earth, the number of dangerous diseases transmitted from animals to humans would increase. [24] She was appointed to the coronavirus disease advisory panel of the European Commission. [24] The panel served to develop public health recommendations to the member states during the pandemic. [24]
On 2 December 2020, Koopmans was appointed to the 13 member team of the World Health Organization's investigation into the origins of COVID-19. [4]
Marion Koopmans is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences (KHMW).
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences is the forum, voice and conscience of science in the Netherlands. It is traditionally a society of excellent Dutch scientists. Members are elected on the basis of high-quality scientific achievements. Membership is for life. The Royal Holland Society of Sciences is a scientific society founded in 1752 in Haarlem.
The 2020 Machiavelli Prize has been awarded to Marion Koopmans and Diederik Gommers, president of the Dutch Society for Intensive Care. The prize is awarded annually for outstanding achievement in the field of public communication. Koopmans and Gommers received the 2020 award for their relentless efforts to make the science on coronavirus accessible to a wide audience. Deliberately seeking dialogue with doubters about the science and opponents of the policy, during the corona pandemic, helped increase understanding, especially among young people. Both Koopmans and Gommers have made it their vocation - in addition to their daily work in fighting the coronavirus, which is so urgent - to explain the coronavirus to a broad public.
Three science museums - NEMO Science Museum, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave and Teylers Museum - have created an award that rewards excellent science communication: the Iris Medal. The aim is to encourage original and effective forms of science communication. The €10,000 prize is awarded annually at the Evening of Science & Society. The prize money is made available by the KHMW. The prize was awarded to Robbert Dijkgraaf in 2019, Lowlands Science in 2020, Marion Koopmans in 2021 and University of the Netherlands in 2022.
The Pandemic & Disaster Preparedness Center (PDPC) was established in 2021. Marion Koopmans is initiator of this centre that aims to learn from the corona pandemic and better prepare society in the Netherlands (and beyond) for possible new pandemics but also disasters. Koopmans is scientific director of this centre.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.
An emerging infectious disease (EID) is an infectious disease whose incidence has increased recently, and could increase in the near future. The minority that are capable of developing efficient transmission between humans can become major public and global concerns as potential causes of epidemics or pandemics. Their many impacts can be economic and societal, as well as clinical. EIDs have been increasing steadily since at least 1940.
Donald Gerard McNeil Jr. is an American journalist. He was a science and health reporter for The New York Times where he reported on epidemics, including HIV/AIDS and the COVID-19 pandemic. His reporting on COVID-19 earned him widespread recognition for being one of the earliest and most prominent voices covering the pandemic.
Luciana Borio is a Brazilian-American infectious disease physician and public health administrator. She is a vice president at In-Q-Tel. She previously served as director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council, acting chief scientist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), assistant commissioner for counterterrorism policy of the FDA, and director of FDA's Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats. She is known for her work advancing clinical trials, the development of medical countermeasures for health emergencies, and the public health responses to Ebola and Zika outbreaks.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).
Disease X is a placeholder name that was adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2024 on their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases to represent a hypothetical, unknown pathogen that could cause a future epidemic. The WHO adopted the placeholder name to ensure that their planning was sufficiently flexible to adapt to an unknown pathogen. Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci stated that the concept of Disease X would encourage WHO projects to focus their research efforts on entire classes of viruses, instead of just individual strains, thus improving WHO capability to respond to unforeseen strains. In 2020, experts, including some of the WHO's own expert advisors, speculated that COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus strain, met the requirements to be the first Disease X.
Daniel R. Lucey is an American physician, researcher, senior scholar and adjunct professor of infectious diseases at Georgetown University, and a research associate in anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where he has co-organised an exhibition on eight viral outbreaks.
Neil Morris Ferguson is a British epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology, who specialises in the patterns of spread of infectious disease in humans and animals. He is the director of the Jameel Institute, and of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, and head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Vice-Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine, all at Imperial College London.
Syra Madad is an American pathogen preparedness expert and infectious disease epidemiologist. Madad is the Senior Director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals where she is part of the executive leadership team which oversees New York City's response to the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in the city's 11 public hospitals. She was featured in the Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak and the Discovery Channel documentary The Vaccine: Conquering COVID.
Michael Joseph Ryan is an Irish epidemiologist and former trauma surgeon, specialising in infectious disease and public health. He is executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, leading the team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. Ryan has held leadership positions and has worked on various outbreak response teams in the field to eradicate the spread of diseases including bacillary dysentery, cholera, Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Marburg virus disease, measles, meningitis, relapsing fever, Rift Valley fever, SARS, and Shigellosis.
Trudie Lang is a Professor of Global Health Research at the University of Oxford. She specialises in clinical trials research capacity building in low-resource setting, and helped to organise the trial for the drug brincidofovir during the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak.
Christian Heinrich Maria Drosten is a German virologist whose research focus is on novel viruses (emergent viruses). During the COVID-19 pandemic, Drosten came to national prominence as an expert on the implications and actions required to combat the illness in Germany.
Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove is an American infectious disease epidemiologist. With a background in high-threat pathogens, Van Kerkhove specializes in emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and is based in the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization (WHO). She is the technical lead of COVID-19 response and the head of emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at WHO.
Pandemic prevention is the organization and management of preventive measures against pandemics. Those include measures to reduce causes of new infectious diseases and measures to prevent outbreaks and epidemics from becoming pandemics.
Nahid Bhadelia is an American infectious-diseases physician, founding director of Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research (CEID) at Boston University and an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. She served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID-19 Response on the White House COVID-19 Response Team.
Caitlin M. Rivers is an American epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making.
Alexandra Phelan is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She specializes in international legal and policy issues that are related to emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, including upstream drivers of disease emergence like climate change.
Natalie E. Dean is an American biostatistician specializing in infectious disease epidemiology. Dean is currently an assistant professor of Biostatistics at the University of Florida. Her research involves epidemiological modeling of outbreaks, including Ebola, Zika and COVID-19.
Science diplomacy is the collaborative efforts by local and global entities to solve global issues using science and technology as a base. In science diplomacy, collaboration takes place to advance science but science can also be used to facilitate diplomatic relations. This allows even conflicting nations to come together through science to find solutions to global issues. Global organizations, researchers, public health officials, countries, government officials, and clinicians have previously worked together to create effective measures of infection control and subsequent treatment. They continue to do so through sharing of resources, research data, ideas, and by putting into effect laws and regulations that can further advance scientific research. Without the collaborative efforts of such entities, the world would not have the vaccines and treatments we now possess for diseases that were once considered deadly such as tuberculosis, tetanus, polio, influenza, etc. Historically, science diplomacy has proved successful in diseases such as SARS, Ebola, Zika and continues to be relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic today.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics is a research institute at Imperial College London in the fields of epidemiology, mathematical modelling of infectious diseases and emergencies, environmental health, and health economics. Co-founded in 2019 by Imperial College London and Community Jameel, the Jameel Institute is housed in the School of Public Health, within the college's Faculty of Medicine. The mission of the Jameel Institute is "to combat threats from disease worldwide".