Harvey Rubin, M.D. PhD

Director of the Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis and Response, University of Pennsylvania

Bio Current as of August 4, 2015

Dr. Rubin is Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania with secondary appointments as Professor in the Department of Microbiology, the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and as Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His research in infectious diseases has been funded by the NIH, NSF, DARPA and the Global Alliance for TB Drug Discovery. In addition to his work on the basic biology of the disease, he has extended the investigations to mathematical modeling of complex biological systems. His research has resulted in more than 90 peer-reviewed papers chapters or reviews.

Dr. Rubin served on a number of national and international scientific review panels including the NIH, NSF, NASA Intelligent Systems Program, DARPA, and The Medical Research Council, South Africa. He was a member of the United States National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) and the Department of Defense/National Academy of Sciences Biological Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. He was the Visiting Professor in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Darwin under the auspices of the Australian Microbiology Association in 2012.

Dr. Rubin is the founder and Director of the Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis and Response (ISTAR) at the University of Pennsylvania. The mission of ISTAR is global–addressing strategies and responses to intentional as well as unintentional threats, including the dynamics of urban preparedness; international treaties and compacts for infectious diseases, protection of the physical and information infrastructures; risk assessment and public communication in times of crises; and economic models of the consequences of pandemics and other disasters. He and his colleagues are developing a Global Governance Structure for Infectious Diseases. Dr. Rubin is the founder of Energize the Chain, a non-profit organization that ensures the delivery of vaccines to people in the most remote regions of the world by utilizing power available at cell tower sites to power the refrigeration systems that are necessary to keep vaccines at the proper temperature.