We seek to better understand the agents that cause infectious disease and to lower barriers to treatment and prevention globally.
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Institute for Global Infectious Disease Research at Rockefeller is a landmark investment in science and global health. Established in 2023 with a transformative grant from SNF under its Global Health Initiative, the SNF Institute's primary objective is to accelerate the development of innovative therapies for emerging pathogens and endemic microbes that threaten global health.
Charles Rice, PhD
Director
Michel Nussenzweig, MD, PhD
Co-Director for Immunology
Barry Coller, MD
Co-Director for Clinical Studies
Jill Horowitz, PhD
Program Director
In addition to internal leadership, the SNF Institute will benefit from the stewardship and commitment of a world-class International Advisory Board (IAB). The IAB members are leaders in the global infectious diseases research and medical community. They will work alongside the Institute leadership for efficient programmatic coordination and leveraging of resources for maximal impact.
The Institute is organized around a new collaborative model for biomedical research. It involves faculty from across Rockefeller, the California Institute of Technology, the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, Karolinska Institute, the University of North Carolina, the COVID Human Genetic Effort, as well as investigators in Brazil, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Israel, Senegal, South Africa, Pakistan, China, and Taiwan.
The SNF Institute supports the Rockefeller University Hospital and the clinical research support infrastructure and educational programs that are also supported by the University’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science. Rockefeller University was first awarded a CTSA at the inception of the program in 2006 and has been continuously funded under the award since then. The CTSA supports workforce development and our translational research navigation program, including personnel who provide advice on a range of important services, including biostatistics, bioinformatics, research participant recruitment, protection of research participants, bionutrition, informatics, community engagement, and dissemination and implementation of research results. It also partially supports a Pilot Grant program and the KL2 Clinical Scholars Program, a 3-year Master’s degree-granting program for junior physician scientists and doctoral level translational investigators.
As the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and Rockefeller University embark on this major research enterprise, it will be important to create an initiative that addresses social and ethical issues in science, health care, and technology. The global community is still facing unprecedented challenges resulting from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. A bioethics initiative within the Institute can make important contributions to the understanding of what we, as a society, have been through and what we need to do going forward.
Equitable participation and ethical conduct in biomedical research are priorities for the Institute. We are actively engaged in discussions with partner institutions such as the Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative (GLIDE) formed by the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford. Our goal is to become integrated into leading efforts into these areas and to make sure that equitability and bioethics become and remain an integral part of our culture and research.
The Hospital’s community engagement programs, which were instrumental in recruiting volunteers for the university’s COVID-19 research, are a resource for the local community and a route to developing and designing responsive community-based health initiatives to serve low-income and under-resourced neighborhoods. In this endeavor, the Hospital has partnered with the Clinical Directors Network, a practice-based research network that conducts studies in safety-net community health centers. This collaboration has helped to expand university studies of infectious diseases. For example, scientists were able to learn more about how Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a serious bacterial infection that is resistant to some antibiotics, spreads in the community and which hygienic practices are best for preventing reinfection. Another example is a project that aims to stem an emerging Chagas disease epidemic by building a full-spectrum team of clinicians and scientists, developing an education and training outreach program, and evaluating using electronic health record data to characterize the epidemiology and testing/treatment of this disease.
The Institute participates in RockEDU, the university’s nationally known science outreach program for middle and high school students and teachers. This outreach initiative sponsors year-round programming, including class visits, research skill-building workshops, accessible science-themed webinars, online science resources, mentorship training, an annual family science festival, and a very competitive, on-campus summer research program for high school students. Since the onset of the pandemic, RockEDU has created special freely available learning resources focused on infectious diseases and the efforts to combat them.
The SNF Institute is collaborating with iMEdD (incubator for Media Education and Development) to create and promote content. iMEdD is an international organization dedicated to supporting transparency, credibility, and independence in journalism.
In addition, an Institute webinar series will be modeled on the university’s COVID-19 webinars, Virtual Discussions with Genuine Experts, which are noted for providing reliable scientific information to a public that is too often bombarded by dangerous misinformation.
