Flu and COVID Pandemics (Evening Meeting)

From Woody:

I have been an active member of Rotary since 2013, serving on multiple club and district committees. During the 2021–22 Rotary year, I served as President of the Rotary Club of Summit County in Frisco, Colorado, and was honored with the “Rotarian of the Year” award for District 5450. Currently, I am a member of the Rotary Club of Fort Collins, where I serve on the International and Polio committees. I am also a member of the organizing committee for the 2025 District 5440 Annual Conference. My wife, Marcy, is a member of the Breakfast Rotary Club.We have two adopted children. Our son, Robert, age 33, was adopted from Russia at age two and returned to Moscow in 2020. He is currently imprisoned in a Russian penal colony on trumped-up drug charges. We are working closely with the U.S. State Department and remain hopeful that he will be included in a future U.S.-Russia prisoner exchange. Our daughter, Anja, age 29, was adopted from Hong Kong and has Chinese and German heritage. She works in the insurance industry in Denver.Over the years, I have served on several nonprofit boards. I am currently the President of the Board for Timberline Adult Day Program, a respite care center in Frisco, Colorado, and a board member of Village Water Filters, which produces and distributes affordable, effective water filters to low-and-middle-income countries and disaster zones. Additionally, my wife and I are passionate about saving the white rhinoceros from extinction. We travel to South Africa annually to work with veterinarians to trim rhino horns, reducing the animals’ risk of being poached.My professional background is in infectious disease immunology. I hold a B.Sc. from the University of Bath, UK; a Ph.D. in immunology from the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology in Freiberg, West Germany; and underwent postdoctoral training at the National Jewish Center for Respiratory Medicine in Denver, Colorado. I established an independent research laboratory at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and later served as President and Executive Director of the Trudeau Institute, a biomedical research institute,in Saranac Lake, New York. I have also held adjunct professorships at the University of Tennesseein Memphis, the State University of New York in Albany, and the University of Vermont in Burlington. My research has focused on immune responses to respiratory pathogens such as influenza and tuberculosis, with the goal of developing novel vaccine strategies. I have published over 250 primary research articles in the field of infectious disease.Throughout my career, I have served on numerous federal review committees and scientific advisory boards—including the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, where I advised on the handling of dangerous pathogens such as the reconstructed 1918 pandemic influenza virus. I was also the editor-in-chief of Viral Immunology for nearly two decades and am presently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Interferon and Cytokine Research. In addition to my editorial work, I operate my own consulting business, providing grant-writing and scientific communication support to researchers applying for funding from government agencies and other organizations.