Nathan Wolfe

As climate change affects the way viruses spread, the efforts of Nathan Wolfe—the Indiana Jones of virus hunting—are more necessary than ever. Author of the bestselling Viral Storm, Wolfe travels the globe to track and eradicate the next pandemic before it strikes. One of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, Wolfe is a hands-on scientist and biotech entrepreneur, which feed into his exhilarating talks on how data, drugs, tools, and tech are changing the future of health.

Scientist and “virus hunter” Nathan Wolfe rethinks pandemic control for our globalized world. By concentrating on how epidemic diseases—such as HIV, SARS, and West Nile—all stem from human contact with infected animals, he discovers new threatening viruses where they first emerge. According to Wired magazine, “Wolfe’s brand of globe-trotting echoes an almost Victorian scientific ethic, an expedition to catalog the unseen menagerie of the world.” His debut book, The Viral Storm, is an “engrossing and fast-paced chronicle of medical exploration and discovery” (Publisher’s Weekly) that take readers from the jungles of Africa to Wolfe’s state-of-the-art labs, shedding light on the often overlooked but ultimately critical field of microbiology. It was published in six languages and shortlisted for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize. 

Wolfe is the Founder and former CEO of Metabiota, the pioneering risk analytics company that improves the world’s resilience to epidemics. He holds the Lorry I. Lokey Business Wire Consulting Professorship in Human Biology at Stanford University. Wolfe received his doctorate in Immunology & Infectious Diseases from Harvard and is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, as well as the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. He has been named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. Wolfe has published over 90 technical articles and book chapters, and his work has been published in or covered by Nature, Science, The Lancet, PNAS, JAMA, The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Wired, Scientific American, NPR, The New Yorker, National Geographic Magazine, and Forbes. Wolfe has over eight years of experience living and conducting biomedical research in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. His endeavors have attracted grant, contract and investment support totaling over $100 million.