Gigi Kwik Gronvall, Ph.D.

Science Advisor

Gigi Kwik Gronvall, Ph.D., became the Science Advisor of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism in April 2009.  Dr. Gronvall is also a Senior Associate at the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility.

On October 4, 2007, Dr. Gronvall testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about the safety and security of high-containment biological laboratories in the United States. A year before, she organized a meeting of diverse stakeholders, including laboratory operators and protestors, to discuss whether and how high containment biological laboratories could be operated safely, productively, and with respect for the communities in which they are placed.

Dr. Gronvall has served on several task forces related to laboratory security, including a 2008 Defense Science Board task force on the biological safety, security, and personnel reliability of the Department of Defense’s biological laboratories, and a 2008 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel charged with providing technical input on the risk of operating Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory (NEIDL).  The NAS panel was recently called back into service by the National Institutes of Health, to provide continuing assistance for risk assessments of the NEIDL.  Dr. Gronvall also serves on a General Accounting Office expert panel for a report on risks associated with the expansion of high-containment laboratories.

Dr. Gronvall is an Associate Editor of the quarterly journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science. She is a founding member of the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC and, prior to joining the faculty in 2003, worked at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. From 2000-2001 she was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Associate at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Dr. Gronvall received a BS in Biology from Indiana University, Bloomington. She subsequently worked as a protein chemist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University for work on T cell receptor/MHC I interactions.