Raina MacIntyre is a Professor of Global Biosecurity and Head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute, at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She received her MBBS from the University of Sydney, and her FRACP, FAFPHM, M. App. Epid. and Ph.D. from The Australian National University. She leads research programs in the control and prevention of epidemics, pandemics, bioterrorism, and emerging infections and has extensive field experience in outbreak investigation and control. She has over 450 publications and leads a National Health and Medical Research Council Centre for Research Excellence in Airborne Threats to Health. Her awards include the Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science and Innovation, the Sir Henry Welcome Medal and Prize for her risk assessment research on bioterrorism, and The Public Health Association of Australia National Immunization Achievement Award. She is currently a member of the WHO COVID-19 Vaccine Composition Technical Advisory group and the WHO SAGE Smallpox and monkeypox working group. She developed EPIWATCH, an AI-driven epidemic observatory that harnesses open-source data and has proven capability in early detection of serious outbreaks. The suite of EPWATCH tools includes ORIGINS, a tool to differentiate natural and unnatural epidemics. She has been researching the increasing risk of unnatural pandemics for over a decade and is the author of Dark Winter – an insider’s guide to pandemics and biosecurity (2022).
