Syra Madad

Syra Madad (, née Sikandar; born October 22, 1986) is an American pathogen preparedness expert and biosecurity advisor. She is Assistant Vice President in the Office of Biopreparedness and Emergency Management and Chief Biopreparedness Officer at NYC Health + Hospitals. She is also Principal Investigator at the NYC Health + Hospitals Institute for Diseases and Disaster Management.

Madad has worked on preparedness and response activities for infectious disease outbreaks, including Ebola, Zika, measles, COVID-19, and mpox.

Madad is a Fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Public Health Editor-at-Large at the New York Academy of Sciences. She serves as Core Faculty at the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center and as Affiliate Faculty at Boston University's Center for Emerging Infectious Disease Policy & Research.

Madad has served on advisory bodies including the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, the Forum on Microbial Threats at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and the World Health Organization Technical Advisory Group on the Responsible Use of the Life Sciences and Dual-Use Research.

Madad was named to Fortunes 2020 40 Under 40 list in health care and to Crain's New York Businesss 2021 Notable Health Care Leaders list.

Early life and education Madad was born in the United States. Her family is of Pakistani background. Her mother and father married and then immigrated to the United States from Pakistan; her mother, Rehana Sikandar, was 18 at the time. Madad's interest in public health and infectious disease began at a young age, including after she saw the 1995 film Outbreak.

Career In 2014, Madad was Lead Continuity of Operations Liaison and State Trainer for the BioThreat and Chemical Threat Teams in the Emergency Preparedness Branch at the Texas Department of State Health Services. In this position she worked in the Ebola and Other Infectious Disease Agent Surge Team in response to a 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in Texas.

During this time, Madad volunteered at the Texas State Medical Operations Center as a Planning and Intelligence Specialist. She also volunteered as Logistics Specialist and Trauma Medical Responder at Sector 7 of the Texas Emergency Medical Task Force.

In 2015, Madad was hired as Senior Director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals which oversees 11 public hospitals in the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States.

Madad is responsible for preparing New York City's municipal hospitals against infection disease outbreaks. Part of her role is to run simulations of outbreaks to prepare staff. In these simulations, healthcare workers care for mock patients and practice cutting-edge treatment protocols in a simulated high-risk environment in which the must act quickly. They also practice use of personal protective equipment to ensure they can wear masks, gown, suits, and gloves appropriately if and when the time comes.

In December 2019, she co-authored an op-ed with Joe Biden advisor's, Ron Klain, which warned against allowing an outbreak preparedness program to expire in May 2020. The program, which was funded in 2015 in response to the Ebola epidemic, equips healthcare facilities and trains frontline medical workers to confront outbreaks of infectious diseases. The funding enabled New York City and other health systems to run more drills, exercises, and collaborative public health protocols. Madad and Klain advocated for Congress to ensure the full network of healthcare institutions remains funded to protect against future outbreaks. As COVID-19 made its way to New York City, Madad oversaw trainings and simulations to prepare healthcare workers for the coming demands that would be placed on the healthcare system.

Madad is an Emerging Leader in Biosecurity Fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Health Security, previously Senior Fellow in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral Informatics & Technological Enterprise Studies Program. Madad is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow of the Federation of American Scientists and part of their COVID-19 Expert Taskforce. From 2009 to the present, Madad has taught at the University of Maryland, College Park's Graduate Program for Biotechnology and Biodefense as an assistant professor.

Madad is on the faculty of the United States Department of Health and Human Services's National Emerging Special Pathogen Training and Education Center's (NETEC), formerly called National Ebola Training and Education Center, funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Public appearances On January 24, 2020, Netflix released the documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak, which followed Madad in her role at the Special Pathogens Program working to prevent an outbreak from occurring and prepare healthcare workers in the event that one does. The film portrays her working to secure funding and preparing personnel in the event of an outbreak. The series was filmed in 2019 and was based on the premise that the world is due for another deadly pandemic. Filming preceded the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which did not reach Madad's jurisdiction in New York City until March 2020. Fox News, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and CNBC. She has also worked to combat misinformation, educating the public on appropriate safety measures and helping them understand what information is actually reliable.

Honors and fellowships 2014: Nova Southeastern University, Alpha Eta Health Science Honor Society 2015: Texas Department of State Health Services, Ebola Response Team Appreciation Award 2017: NYC Health + Hospital, Insider, Special Pathogens Preparedness Pioneer Recognized as Emerging Leader 2017: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Health Security's Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Fellowship Program 2021: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Fellow

Personal life Madad is married to Ali Madad, an AI designer and creative director. They have four children She is a practicing Muslim.

Selected works and publications

Madad, Syra et al. (2020). NYC Health + Hospitals’ Rapid Responses To COVID-19 Were Built On A Foundation Of Emergency Management, Incident Command, and Analytics https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20200609.171463/full/ Madad, Syra. (2020). Coronavirus protection – as country reopens, this is your best defense. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/coronavirus-country-reopens-best-protection-dr-syra-madad