Edward You, former Working Group member of the White House National Security Council Policy Coordinating Committee on Countering Biological Threats, accepted the invitation to become a Senior Fellow for the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
The Scowcroft Institute Director, Andrew Natsios, invited Mr. You to join the Senior Fellows program based on his expertise and accomplishments in his discipline. This program recognizes individuals who are committed to making significant contributions to the development of the Scowcroft Institute and to its missions, aims, and objectives. As a Senior Fellow, Mr. You will prepare a paper for the Scowcroft White Paper Series and provide one lecture at the University.
Mr. You participated in the Institute’s Pandemic Policy and Biosecurity Program as a panelist in the 5th Annual Pandemic Policy Summit in College Station, Texas, and as a mentor for students on the Panel for Global Health Careers during the most recent Summit. Mr. You shared his knowledge on the potential criminal misuse of biology and on issues dealing with the American bioeconomy.
During his career in public service, Mr. You has been directly involved in policy-making efforts with a focus on biosecurity. In addition to serving as a Working Group member of the National Security Council Policy Coordinating Committee on Countering Biological Threats, he also worked as the FBI ex officio member of the National Institutes of Health National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. He had the privilege of serving on two National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committees, the Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Microbial Threats and the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law’s Forum on Synthetic Biology.
Before working in the policy and countering biological threats fields, Mr. You worked for six years in graduate research focusing on retrovirology and human gene therapy at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. He subsequently worked for three years at the biotechnology firm AMGEN Inc. in cancer research.
Mr. You is a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate and is currently detailed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of National Security. His responsibilities include coordinating and improving FBI and interagency efforts to identify, assess, and respond to biological threats or incidents. He leads efforts to identify and address potential security challenges in emerging biotechnology, such as synthetic biology and the use of big data in engineering biology. His overall goal is to safeguard the scientific community, the life science research enterprise, and the American bioeconomy. Before being promoted to the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, Mr. You was a member of the FBI Los Angeles Field Office Joint Terrorism Task Force and served on the FBI Hazardous Evidence Response Team.
