Thomas Jaenisch is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. He is a clinical researcher and infectious disease epidemiologist. He was trained as a medical doctor, has obtained a PhD in International Health (Johns Hopkins University) and is board certified in Medical Microbiology, Virology, Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Tropical Medicine (in Germany). He is the director of the Arbovirus Research Consortium at the Center for Global Health, Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH) and his research focuses on emerging viruses with pandemic potential, notably dengue viruses (DENV), Zika virus (ZIKV), and more recently also SARS-CoV-2.
For the last 18 years, Thomas has coordinated international clinical research networks in Low- and Middle Income (LMIC) countries, focusing on Dengue and Zika viruses, including two multicentric observational dengue consortia and one Zika birth cohorts consortium (“Towards sustainable Dengue Control” - DENCO, 2005-2009; “International Research Consortium on Dengue Risk Assessment, Management and Surveillance” , 2011-2016; ZIKAlliance consortium (2016-2021, H2020), where he was responsible for multicentric pregnant women and children cohorts in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The clinical-epidemiological research on Dengue and Zika has served as a ‘playbook’ for other emerging viral diseases, including SARS-CoV-2, and is now embedded in a broader research agenda around pandemic preparedness that includes surveillance using seroprevalence studies as well as governance of (virtual) federated biorepositories. The lessons learned from implementing a rapid research response to emerging epidemics have led to concerted efforts around data sharing between multicentric infectious disease cohorts. Thomas is the PI of the project “Reconciliation of Cohort Data for Infectious Diseases” ReCoDID and is involved in several other projects around coordination of data sharing for infectious disease cohorts. In a new project “Cohort Network To Be Activated Globally In Outbreaks” – CONTAGIO – the data sharing efforts are married with the preparedness research for natural history cohorts in low-and-middle income countries.
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