Ralph S. Baric

Ralph Steven Baric (born 1954) is an American epidemiologist. He is the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, and professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Baric's work involves coronaviruses, including gain of function research aimed at devising effective vaccines against coronaviruses. Baric has warned of emerging coronaviruses presenting as a significant threat to global health, due to zoonosis. Baric's work has drawn criticism from some scientists and members of the public related to chimeric virus experiments conducted at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Career Baric has published multiple articles and book chapters on the epidemiology and genetics of various viruses, including norovirus, and coronaviruses, as well as potential treatments for viral diseases.

In 2015, with Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he published an article titled "A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence," which describes their work in generating and characterizing a chimeric virus which added the spike of a bat coronavirus (SHC014) onto the backbone of a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV (rMA15). The research related to this article drew criticism from other scientists due to fears that the SHC014-rMA15 chimeric virus could have pandemic potential. This concern was renewed and echoed by members of the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts have noted that the virus was adapted to a mouse model and had decreased virulence in human tissues. The chimeric virus was also less virulent than the wild type rMA15 virus, as is expected in most chimeras. In 2021, he was elected member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences.

Baric's pay from federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants was frozen in April 2025, following the re-election of Donald Trump, and he was placed on administrative leave from UNC until January 2026. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) suspended Baric in May 2026 from receiving funding over his coronavirus research in 2014, alleging he helped create a dangerous virus that had a "gain of function" and threatened human health. Baric was again placed on administrative leave. He described the accusation as "bullshit", believing it stemmed from unproven allegations that he helped engineer SARS-CoV-2, and added that those coronavirus experiments did not involve gain of function research. Though the suspension letter from HHS does not mention SARS-CoV-2 nor allege that Baric helped engineer the virus, in his 2023 book The Wuhan Cover-Up HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to link Baric's research to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Selected publications