Center for Biosecurity

The Center for Biosecurity is an independent, nonprofit organization of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) that is dedicated to improving the country’s resilience to major biological threats.

Mission Statement
The Center’s mission is to affect policy and practice in ways that lessen the illness, death, and civil disruption that would follow large-scale epidemics, whether they occur naturally or result from the use of a biological weapon. Toward that end, the Center: 1) Provides independent, critical research and analysis for decision makers in government, national security, bioscience, medicine, public health, and private industry; 2) Builds international networks of scientists, medical and public health practitioners, scholars, and decision makers to improve communication about biosecurity, create common objectives, and facilitate development of new knowledge; 3) Proposes, designs, builds, tests, and promulgates essential operational systems needed to manage the response to bioattacks and mass casualty epidemics; 4) Develops scenarios for decision makers that illustrate key challenges in epidemic preparedness and response and offer possible paths forward; and 5) Promotes the responsible use and governance of increasingly powerful bioscience and biotechnologies.

The Center’s multidisciplinary professional staff has experience in government, medicine, public health, bioscience, and the social sciences. Staff members publish research findings regularly and are frequently consulted by government agencies, businesses, academia, and the media for independent analyses of issues pertaining to national and global epidemic preparedness and response.

Major Conferences and Events

 * National Symposium on Medical and Public Health Response to Bioterrorism. February 1999
 * 2nd National Symposium on Medical and Public Health Response to Bioterrorism. November 2000
 * Dark Winter. June 2001
 * The Public as an Asset, Not a Problem: A Summit on Leadership During Bioterrorism. February 2003
 * Atlantic Storm. January 2005
 * Conference on Biosafety and Biorisks. May 2005
 * Bulls, Bears, and Birds: Preparing the Financial Industry for a Pandemic. September 2005
 * Disease, Disaster, and Democracy: The public's stake in health emergency planning. May 2006