Dr. Pei-Yong Shi is the John Sealy Distinguished Chair of Innovations in Molecular Biology at UTMB. Prior to joining UTMB in 2015, he served as Executive Director at the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases. His lab has developed a reverse genetic system that allows for rapid drug discovery, vaccine development, and diagnosis of viral infections. His work enabled the rapid development of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, the first vaccine with 95% efficacy in humans. He has been ranked among the top 1% most cited scientists in the last decade.

David M. Morens, MD, serves as the Senior Scientific Advisor to the Director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. With over 40 years of experience studying emerging infectious diseases and viral disease pathogenesis, his expertise is instrumental in combating the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Morens is an infectious disease physician, chair of the American Committee on Arthropod-Borne Viruses, fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine an Hygiene, and prolific author with hundreds of scientific publications.

Dr. Tyrone B. Hayes is a professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. He was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina where he developed his love for biology. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1989 and his PhD from the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. Following his post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, he was hired as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley in 1994. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2000 and to full professor in 2003. Hayes’ research focuses on developmental endocrinology with an emphasis on evolution and environmental regulation of growth and development. For the last twenty years, the role of endocrine disrupting contaminants, particularly pesticides, has been a major focus. Hayes is interested in the impact of chemical contaminants on environmental health and public health, with a specific interest in the role of pesticides in global amphibian declines and environmental justice concerns associated with targeted exposure of racial and ethnic minorities to endocrine disruptors and the role that exposure plays in health care disparities