The Chain looks back to earlier this year when researchers virtually convened on the one-year anniversary of the first documented case of COVID-19 in the United States. This episode brings you a panel discussion from PepTalk Protein Science and Production Week, moderated by Karla Satchell, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Co-Director of the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Northwestern University. The panel discusses the role of data integration for the rapid R&D of therapeutics and vaccines, the immediate challenges in the new year – as the Delta variant spreads this summer in the United States -- and how we can transform nearsighted lessons learned into a farsighted vision of pandemic preparedness. Moderator: Karla Satchell, PhD, Professor, Microbiology; Principal Investigator and Co-Director, Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases, Northwestern UniversityPanelists:William Gillette, PhD, Principal Scientist, Protein Expression Laboratory, Leidos Biomedical ResearchArvind Ramanathan, PhD, Computational Biologist, Argonne National LaboratoryErica Ollmann Saphire, PhD, Professor, La Jolla Institute for ImmunologyAnupam Singhal, PhD, Senior Product Manager, Antibody Discovery, Marketing, Berkeley Lights, Inc.