Trevor Bedford: Two Astounding Awards For Virologist Who Raised Early COVID Alarms
He's had quite a September. Bedford has just been named a MacArthur Fellow and was also awarded a $9 million, 7-year grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for his work on the pandemic.
Trevor Bedford is a computational virologist and professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who has devoted his professional life to the pandemic for nearly two years.
On February 29, 2020, he used Twitter to report that the genome of a COVID-19 case reported in Washington state showed the first known community transmission in the U.S. "There are some enormous implications here," he wrote. His prior work to track the evolution and spread of other viruses has been critical in understanding this global pandemic.
For his efforts, Bedford has been named a — the so-called "genius grant" that comes with. Robin Young, a host of NPR's to learn his thoughts on the origins, spread and possible future of the pandemic.
