Nathan Wolfe

A captivating speaker on the Coronavirus pandemic, Nathan Wolfe holds a peerless understanding of how pandemics start, spread, grow, and are contained. This current public health threat is disrupting industries, the economy, daily life, entire countries. A clear understanding of what the coronavirus is, and what comes next, is vital. In urgent talks, Wolfe provides that understanding. Dubbed “the Indiana Jones of virus hunting,” Wolfe is the founder of Metabiota, the risk analytics company that improves the world’s resilience to epidemics. The author of the bestselling book The Viral Storm, he was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World for his work tracking pandemics. Wolfe explores, as only he can, the short and long term impacts of the most important topic in the world today. 

Scientist and “virus hunter” Nathan Wolfe rethinks pandemic control for our globalized world. Currently, his focus is on the roiling social, medical, and economic impacts of the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak. By concentrating on how epidemic diseases—such as HIV, SARS, West Nile—all stem from human contact with infected animals, he discovers new threatening viruses where they first emerge, and has become a much-sought-after speaker on epidemics. The co-author of the recent blockbuster op-ed in The Washington Post, Wolfe tackles the enormous risks, questions, and challenges we face as we learn how to stop the next new virus. 

Nathan Wolfe holds the Lorry I. Lokey Business Wire Consulting Professorship in Human Biology at Stanford University. He 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. He has also spoken at TED. Wolfe has published over 90 technical articles and book chapters, and his work has been published in and covered by Nature, Science, Scientific American, The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The New Yorker (which profiled him), National Geographic Magazine, Forbes, and Wired, which wrote that “Wolfe’s brand of globe-trotting echoes an almost Victorian scientific ethic, an expedition to catalog the unseen menagerie of the world.” 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. His debut book, The Viral Storm, is an “engrossing and fast-paced chronicle of medical exploration and discovery” (Publisher’s Weekly) that many in 2020 view as prescient.