Dr. Atanda is the Policy Advisor at the U.S. DHS Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office where he leads a portfolio of work related to biological and health security threats as well as emerging issues in science and technology, in particular those pertaining to converging technologies in the artificial intelligence, life sciences, and synthetic biology area of work.
Previously, he led work at Ending Pandemics with multisectoral national teams building digital disease surveillance infrastructure in south Africa and south-east Asia through a One Health lens; and supported launch of a web-based, one-stop shop for global influenza-like illness data, an exemplar of utilization of data collected via participatory surveillance. Before that, he was program lead for Maryland’s biosurveillance program – a biological threat early warning system launched post-9/11 in response to Amerithrax, and supported the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Initiative at NIH during his residency training to identify small U.S. businesses developing innovative technologies to rapidly scale up COVID-19 testing. He has almost two decades of experience supporting multilaterals, INGOs, national public health institutes, local health departments and think tanks.
