Sabrina Sholts with Dr. Julianne Meisner

Though the COVID-19 pandemic looms large in Sholts’s account, it is, in fact, just one of the many infectious disease events explored in her book. When the next pandemic happens, and how bad it becomes, is largely within our highly capable human hands—and will be determined by what we do with our extraordinary human brains.

Sabrina Sholts is the curator of biological anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where she developed the major exhibit Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World. She has also served as a scientific commissioner for a related exhibition at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France. 

Julianne Meisner, PhD, MS, BVM&S, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, focusing on One Health and pandemics. Her research explores the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health, with a focus on novel pathogen emergence and the impacts of livestock keeping. She holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh and UW, and her current projects include investigating the effects of land use change on disease emergence and refining models for human-animal contact networks.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle