Angela Pannier, associate professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will speak during the SCIENCE 2034 Live Congressional briefings on June 24.
Pannier will join a group of panelists to discuss the future of science and research during events before audiences from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Pannier’s research on the potential for safer, faster and easier vaccines will be one topic covered during the briefing. Funding for vaccine research is critical because she believes that the pace of current vaccine development will not be able to keep up with multiplying infectious disease threats, such as rotavirus, Toxoplasma, and pandemic influenza.
A UNL multidisciplinary team is developing a new model for vaccine development and delivery with expertise in food science, virology, mathematical models in telecommunications networking, biology of infectious diseases and biological systems engineering.
“We have assembled a fantastic team of experts here at UNL that is well-positioned to achieve vaccination goals,” Pannier said. “However, like many SCIENCE 2034 topics, our goals will only be made possible with sustained research funding over a long period of time.”
SCIENCE 2034 is an initiative of The Science Coalition that is focused on making educated predictions about how well-funded scientific research can change the world within the next 20 years. UNL is one of over 60 universities in the coalition, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of the nation’s leading public and private research universities working to sustain the federal government’s investment in basic scientific research as a means to stimulate the economy, spur innovation and drive the nation’s global competitiveness.
Pannier’s collaborators on the vaccination research are Tadeusz Wysocki, Amanda Ramer-Tait and Deborah Brown from UNL; and Paul Davis from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Joining Pannier on the SCIENCE 2034 Live panel are Justin Crepp from the University of Notre Dame; Ken Hanson from Florida State University, Federico Sciammarella from Northern Illinois University; Leen Kawas from Washington State University; and Matthew Tirrell from the University of Chicago Institute for Molecular Engineering.
A podcast will be made available following the briefing here.
