Senior Fellow of Global Health at Johns Hopkins University, Ilaria Capua led Italian and international research laboratories and developed the concept of Circular Health. Member of the European Academy of Sciences, she is author of books for adults and children and columnist of Corriere della Sera.
For over thirty years Ilaria Capua has directed research groups in Italy and abroad, focusing on viral infections transmissible from animals to humans and their potential pandemic. She pioneered open access science applied to pandemic preparedness, devising and laying the foundation for the development of a platform for sharing virus genetic data to accelerate and optimize pandemic emergency response. This initiative, taken up by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, has overturned the existing paradigm – and today, thanks to that initiative, millions of Sars-cov-2 sequences are available in publicly accessible databases. Appointed Grand Official Order of Merit of the Republic in 2012, from 2013 to 2016 she was a member of the Italian Parliament at the invitation of then Prime Minister Mario Monti.
From 2016 to 2023 he headed the University of Florida’s “One Health” center of excellence, where he developed the concept of Circular Health, which promotes health advancement as an integrated system through interdisciplinary approaches.
She is also an essayist and author of very successful books including Io, a virus dealer (Rizzoli, 2017), Il Dopo. The virus that forced us to change the mental map (Mondadori, 2020), Circular Health (Aegean, 2019), The wonder and transformation (Mondadori, 2021), The courage not to be afraid (Solferino, 2022). He also wrote books for children, including: Ti conosco mascherina (La Coccinella, 2020), Il viaggio segreto dei virus (De Agostini, 2021), Girotondo è uno il mondo (La Coccinella, 2021).
From her professional history have been taken some documentaries and was made a film (Io trafficante di virus, 2021) starring Anna Foglietta.
She has received countless awards, including in 2008 the Scientific American 50 Award, awarded to the world’s 50 best researchers, and in 2021 the Hypatia Prize for life sciences awarded by the European Academy of Sciences. In 2023 she was awarded an honorary degree in Medicine and Surgery by the University of Palermo.
