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Anthony's work at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk () explores how governance, science, and technology can better protect societies from biological risks. His interest in global health security began in Peru, where he grew up and where mosquito-borne and other tropical diseases remain prevalent. His early research took him into a laboratory initially focused on malaria before he moved to Singapore to study mosquito-borne viruses including Chikungunya, a disease originally from Sub-Saharan Africa that has since spread to Asia, The Americas and even Europe.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, his work shifted towards pathogens with epidemic and pandemic relevance, including SARS-CoV-2 –the causative agent of COVID-19– and Mpox. But the pandemic also changed the way he thought about the contribution biomedical scientists could make to global health.

"For most of my initial training in laboratory-based research, I thought that one of the best ways to fight infectious diseases was through understanding the basic biology of a pathogen, or how the body responds to infection, to unveil what mechanisms we could target through therapies like vaccines or antivirals," he explains. "But then the COVID-19 pandemic happened when I was pursuing my PhD in Singapore, and being from the Majority World, I saw how inequitable the response was in different countries."

Anthony says the scientific response to COVID-19 demonstrated what basic and translational research can achieve, but that scientific breakthroughs are only one part of the response to a global health emergency. "I think science delivered in the sense that we came out with a COVID-19 vaccine in record time," he says, "but that's just one piece of the big puzzle in global health and international cooperation. How do you balance power, geopolitics, and national interests for equitable access to life-saving medical technologies in places that need it the most? That was one of the reasons why I decided to migrate from the laboratory towards working in improving global health security governance.”

"There's always a need for the expertise scientists bring into that space. I spent years doing biomedical research to understand infectious threats, and now I use that experience on the other side of the table —with the people making the decisions, who don't always have the subject-matter expertise themselves."

As part of his transition to global health security, Anthony pursued an MPhil in Population Health Sciences (Public Health track) at St Edmund’s College, before joining CSER as a postdoctoral researcher and ����Vlog�ٷ� as a Junior Research Fellow.

The questions explored at the interdisciplinary reflect the direction of Anthony's own work, which sits at the intersection of science and policy. Themed around 'Science transcending borders', the 2026 event brought together 70 Nobel Laureates and more than 600 young scientists from around the world.

"The problem I'm working on in global health security doesn't just require me to understand biomedical sciences — it also means engaging heavily with national and international policy and governance, which are social sciences," Anthony says. "That makes my field interdisciplinary by nature." He was delighted to be selected to attend, describing the experience as "a very enriching opportunity".

"When you're looking at these wicked problems that are so complex to address, having a diversity of viewpoints — from people working in biology, chemistry, or physics, like at Lindau — gives you an angle you might never have considered."

One of Anthony's most memorable encounters was with Katalin Karikó, whose research played a seminal role in the development of mRNA vaccine technology — including the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine — and who was jointly awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Drew Weissman. Lindau also changed the way he saw Nobel Laureates. Researchers who had once seemed like distant scientific 'superstars' quickly came to feel like colleagues, sharing their own experiences of uncertainty and professional setbacks, just like any other scientist.

Coming from Peru and having worked across different countries, Anthony is particularly conscious of the structural inequalities that can shape scientific careers. "Katalin had to leave Hungary because science wasn't well supported there, and she still struggled after migrating to the US. It's worrying that, even now, so many bright scientific minds have to leave their home countries to contribute — to society or to research — simply because the resources aren't there," he says.

During his time as a student in Cambridge, Anthony closely followed the Global Health Hub's activities at ����Vlog�ٷ�, having been invited by College Fellow Dr Tolullah Oni. He says Cambridge is a particularly stimulating environment for thinking about global health. "It's a university with a very strong outlook for collaboration and cooperation, and for the kind of research that might have an impact not only in the UK, but on the development of other countries too."

For Anthony, maintaining a strong relationship between scientific evidence and political decision-making is essential, particularly in the wake of COVID-19. "The pandemic dented people's trust in science, and in scientists. But I'm a scientist at the core. I follow the evidence, because I know it's still the best foundation to guide decision-making," he says ruefully. "Politicians and the public need to listen to the evidence scientists can offer. If you leave decision-makers in a room without that expertise, the outcome ends up driven by other interests rather than by what the science actually shows." At the same time, he recognises the challenges scientists face when communicating evidence during an emerging crisis, when decisions sometimes have to be made before sufficient evidence exists.

This tension between evidence, uncertainty and decision-making is likely to become even more important as artificial intelligence develops and becomes increasingly embedded in biomedical research and global health. Anthony sees considerable potential for AI to help address global inequalities and to transform biomedical research and pandemic preparedness. But he also believes that questions of safety and security need to be considered alongside equitable access. "I think AI has the promise of helping to overcome long-standing barriers in scientific and technological development. But safety and security concerns shouldn't come at the cost of access for the Majority World, where these technologies are still out of reach. There's a lot of work to be done in sitting down together and finding ways to balance equitable access and benefit-sharing against genuine safety and security concerns."

That message is perhaps one of the clearest connections between Anthony's own journey and his experience at Lindau: scientific research does not exist in isolation, but forms part of much wider questions about society, policy, and international cooperation.

 

Image credit: Torben Nuding / Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings