Peter Hale is the founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for Vaccine Research in Washington, D.C. In April 2012 the Foundation organized, co-chaired and arranged financing for the first, two-day international symposium on gain-of-function research involving the creation of de novo viruses with enhanced properties: “H5N1 Research: Biosafety, Biosecurity and Bioethics,” at the Royal Society in London. This involvement led to a decade of advocacy and activism to thwart the excesses of such research and argue for increased national and international oversight. The Foundation was among the first in the U.S. to call for a pause in federal funding of such research which led to the Obama administration’s two-year moratorium in 2014. He was also a founding member of the Cambridge Working Group.