Alison P. Galvani [SEP] occupation
Alison P. Galvani
Alison P. Galvani (born ca. 1977) is an American epidemiologist. She is the Burnett and Stender Families Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis.
She became interested in biology after reading Richard Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" in high school. She wrote Dawkins and he replied, encouraging her to apply to Oxford University. She earned a degree in biological sciences from Oxford and continued her studies there, receiving a
mutations of the H5N1 virus genome to identify mutations which allowed airborne spread. While the stated goal of this research was to improve surveillance and prepare for influenza viruses which are of particular risk in causing a pandemic, there was significant concern that the laboratory strains themselves could escape. Marc Lipsitch and Alison P. Galvani coauthored a paper in PLoS Medicine arguing that experiments in which scientists manipulate bird influenza viruses to make them transmissible in mammals deserve more intense scrutiny as to whether or not their risks outweigh their benefits. Lipsitch also described influenza as