About

Advancing innovative approaches to investigating disease emergence

Through collaborative, transdisciplinary research, the Institute for Pandemic Insights develops scientific and technological tools to tackle diseases that impact health security, biodiversity, and human well-being. By integrating breakthroughs in biotechnology, machine learning and AI, satellite and computer vision, mathematical modeling, and biosecurity, our work delivers evidence-based solutions that protect human and animal health and support resilient ecosystems.

Launched in 2025, the Institute for Pandemic Insights is led by Dr. Christine K. Johnson, with Faculty Strategic Advisory Board members Dr. Simon Anthony, Dr. Cristina Davis, and Dr. Angel Desai. It is the home to multiple research centers and projects, including the NSF Center for Pandemic Insights, the NIH CREID EpiCenter for Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence, and the UC Davis EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics. The Institute for Pandemic Insights supports research collaborations with Schools and Colleges across the UC Davis campus and partners with over 12 top institutions nationwide, along with federal and state agency stakeholders. Together, we can transform how the world anticipates and responds to emerging disease threats.

Preparing for Pandemics of Any Kind

The need for smarter, faster, and more coordinated insights into pandemics has never been greater.

Understanding Pandemics Across Disciplines

Global spread of diseases impact animals, plants, and entire ecosystems with emerging needs across many parts society.

Building a Shared Vision of Preparedness

We connect experts across ecology, engineering, medicine, and policy to advance a unified One Health approach.

Preparing for Pandemics of Any Kind

Pandemics have shaped human history, from the Plague of Athens (430 BCE) and the Black Death (1350 CE) to the 1918 Influenza and COVID-19. Each arose when pathogens crossed animal, human, and environmental boundaries, a process now accelerated by global travel, trade, and urbanization.

While every major outbreak has driven advances in medicine and public health, our interconnected world now moves faster than our defenses. The need for smarter, faster, and more coordinated insights into pandemics, especially those that emerge from animals to infect humans, has never been greater. This is exactly what the Institute for Pandemic Insights aims to do.

Map highlighting disease outbreak regions in around the world.

Understanding Pandemics Across Disciplines

Pandemics don’t just affect people. Global spread of diseases impact animals, plants, and entire ecosystems with emerging needs across many parts of society.

Public health addresses epidemics and pandemics that propagate in people, even though many of these diseases first arise in animals.
Agriculture faces blights, infestations, and epiphytotics that impact food security, often spread when affected plants are moved by people or animals.
Farm animal health tracks outbreaks, epizootics, and panzootics that affect livestock productivity and agricultural workers.
Wildlife health investigates diseases that impact biodiversity and conservation, as well as infections that can be passed from wild animals to humans.

The underlying processes of cross-species transmission and rapid disease spread are strikingly similar across all of these sectors, and the Institute for Pandemic Insights is developing tools that can help address all types of outbreaks.

Building a Shared Vision of Preparedness

At the Institute for Pandemic Insights, we connect experts across ecology, engineering, medicine, and policy to advance a unified One Health approach that prepares us for pandemics of any kind.

For example, our researchers at the NSF Center for Pandemic Insights are responding to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in collaboration with several state and federal stakeholders. By developing new technology and approaches to detect HPAI H5N1 influenza viruses, identify infected animals, and collect samples and data from challenging marine environments, we can investigate how avian influenza moves between species and uncover key insights into the pre-emergence phase of HPAI H5N1 in coastal ecosystems to strengthen our collective response.

Two individuals examine a drone in a lab.