Pardis Sabeti develops powerful methods and tools for advancing genome biology and medicine. Her lab has created some of the most widely used algorithms and powerful molecular tools to mine the human genome for beneficial genetic elements as well as transformative methods for gene delivery of new biomedicines. She has contributed to widely varying fields — such as viral sequencing and diagnostic technology, information theory, rural disease surveillance, and education — to create comprehensive approaches for detecting, containing, and treating deadly infectious diseases. The microbes she studies include Lassa virus, Ebola virus, Zika virus, SARS-CoV-2, influenza, Plasmodium falciparum malaria, and Borrelia. She has invested in capacity building and education, enabling the first diagnosis of Ebola in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, helping to train more than 1,500 African scientists, and establishing genome centers in West Africa. Sabeti also leads a team of international colleagues in piloting a pandemic preemption system called Sentinel — that was designated as an Audacious Project by TED and its nonprofit partners in 2020 — in West Africa. The project, which is the culmination of a decade-long collaboration named the African Center of Excellence in Genomics of Infectious Disease (ACEGID), was deeply impactful on the ground in the battle against Covid-19.
