Dr. Rivers is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is an epidemiologist specializing in preparedness and response for epidemics, pandemics, and deliberately occurring events. Dr. Rivers recently returned from an appointment as founding associate director of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Dr. Rivers has testified in front of the United States Congress on several occasions and is a frequent advisor to senior leaders at the state and federal levels. She served on the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition Team working on COVID-19 policies. Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Rivers participated as author or contributor in influential reports that are guiding the US pandemic response, including National Coronavirus Response: A Roadmap to Reopening and Public Health Principles for a Phased Reopening During COVID-19: Guidance for Governors, the latter of which was used by the National Governors Association, the state of Maryland, and Washington, DC, to guide reopening plans.
Prior to joining the Center in 2017, Dr. Rivers worked as an epidemiologist for the US Army Public Health Center as a Department of Defense Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation Scholar. She also participated in a National Science and Technology Council Pandemic Prediction and Forecasting Science and Technology working group. Dr. Rivers serves as an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security.
Dr. Rivers has been awarded the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Faculty Award for Excellence in US Public Health Practice; the Department of the Army Achievement Medal for Civilian Service; and a Department of Defense Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Research Transformation Scholarship. In 2015, she earned a PhD in genetics, bioinformatics, and computational biology from Virginia Tech. Her doctoral research focused on computational epidemiology, specifically modeling emerging infectious diseases such as avian influenza A (H7N9), Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and Ebola virus disease for public health support using nontraditional, publicly available sources of data. Dr. Rivers received an MPH with a concentration in infectious disease from Virginia Tech in 2013 and a BA in anthropology from the University of New Hampshire in 2011.
Dr. Watson is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on public health risk assessment, crisis and risk-based decision making, public health and healthcare preparedness and response, biodefense, and emerging infectious disease preparedness and response. She is currently focused on the US and international response to COVID-19.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Watson has led or coauthored a series of influential reports related to contact tracing, reopening businesses, and the US criminal justice system. She has produced and contributed to a series of risk assessments on the topics of mass gatherings, business reopening, and university operations during COVID-19. Dr. Watson is also working with the World Health Organization to understand and estimate COVID-19 burden of disease around the world.
From 2012 to 2013, Dr. Watson served as Program Manager for the Integrated CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear] Terrorism Risk Assessment program of the US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.
Since joining the Center in 2004, Dr. Watson has led a variety of projects and authored many peer-reviewed articles and reports, including articles on biological threat characterization; risk assessment; federal decontamination plans for a wide-area biological attack; federal, state, and local medical response to Hurricane Katrina; and the National Hospital Preparedness Program. Her work also focuses on supporting national and global health security. She was a member of the Center’s joint external evaluation team that conducted an assessment of Taiwan’s capacities and capabilities under the World Health Organization International Health Regulations. Dr. Watson also serves as an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security.
Dr. Watson earned a DrPH in Health Policy and Management in 2017 and an MPH in 2009, both from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She earned a BA in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology in 2004 from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Alison Kelly is the Chief of Staff at the Center for Outbreak Response Innovation. Ms. Kelly has over 3 decades of public health experience, serving in a variety of leadership roles at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both domestically and globally. Most recently, she was based in Brazil, where she served as CDC’s Deputy Regional Director for South America and helped establish the South America Modeling and Outbreak Analytics Community of Practice. She was the founding Deputy Director of CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics and the Director of CDC’s Office of Appropriations for 5 years. Ms. Kelly also served in CDC’s offices in Beijing, China and Washington DC. She led the development of CDC’s annual budget submission for fiscal years 2018-2022 and oversaw COVID-19 budget policy for over $60 billion in supplemental funding.
Ms. Kelly earned a master’s degree in international and public affairs from the University of California San Diego, and a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College.
The Center for Outbreak Response Innovation is supported through Cooperative Agreement NU38FT000004 between CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics and Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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