Institute for Diseases and Disaster Management – The Team
The Team
Dr. David Silvestri, Executive Sponsor
Dr. Syra Madad, Principal Investigator
Dr. Cara Taubman, Co-Principal Investigator
Dr. Laura Iavicoli, Senior Medical Advisor for Emergency Medicine
Dr. Michael Meguerdichian, Senior Medical Advisor for Simulation
Dr. Tsion Firew, Senior Medical Advisor for Outbreak Science
About the Principal Investigator
Dr. Syra Madad, DHSc, MSc, MCP is an internationally recognized public health leader and epidemiologist in infectious disease and special pathogens preparedness and response. She serves as the Principal Investigator at the Institute of Disaster and Disaster Management and Chief Biopreparedness Officer at New York City Health + Hospitals. She is also the Core Faculty in the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center (NETEC), and Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dr. Madad’s work focuses on the preparedness for, response to and recovery from infectious disease outbreaks with an emphasis on healthcare and public health biopreparedness. She’s responded to multiple infectious disease outbreaks including Ebola, Zika, measles and COVID-19. Dr. Madad is featured in 2 documentaries, the Netflix docuseries, Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak and the Discovery documentary, The Vaccine: Conquering COVID.
Email: syra.madad@nychhc.org
About the Co-Principal Investigator
Dr. Cara Taubman is an emergency physician whose work spans the front lines of disaster response and the broader mission of building resilient health systems — bringing specialty expertise in disaster medicine, emergency management, and health security to communities in the United States and around the world. She currently practices medicine at New York City Health + Hospitals – Harlem Hospital, where she serves as Medical Director for Emergency Management and Associate Director of the Emergency Department. Dr. Taubman holds academic appointments as an Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Adjunct Associate Professor of Public Health at New York Medical College’s School of Health Sciences and Practice, and Adjunct Faculty at the BIDMC Disaster Medicine Fellowship. She is also a Fellow of the New York Medical College Center for Disaster Medicine.