Dr. Saskia Popescu is an infectious disease epidemiologist, infection preventionist, and global health security leader with expertise in outbreak response, biopreparedness, and addressing evolving biological threats. She is a Professor at the University of Maryland in the School of Medicine and holds appointments at RAND and George Mason University, where she teaches courses on global health security and applies analysis to strengthen bioresilience and response across public and private sector infrastructure.

Prior to joining GHSN, Dr. Popescu served as a Policy Researcher at RAND and Senior Fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks’ Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons, where she supported projects addressing pandemic preparedness, biosecurity policy, and bioweapons nonproliferation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Popescu led global epidemiological and infection prevention response for Netflix, addressing infectious disease threats and biothreat intelligence needs for studio productions. During this time, she consulted for the World Health Organization on COVID‑19 infection prevention and continues to serve as an external expert for the European Centre for Disease Control.

From 2011-2020, Dr. Popescu worked in frontline outbreak response and biopreparedness within hospitals, addressing nosocomial infections and building hospital programs for high-consequence disease response. Much of her work has focused on converging risks, such as AMR and conflict, while identifying and addressing vulnerabilities to biological threats regardless of source.

She is currently a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an alumni of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security ELBI program. She a member of the PREZODE Pillar 3 working group addressing spillover prevention, an Assistant Editor of Vaccine, a Co-Lead Editor of the APIC text, and has served as a committee member for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) working groups addressing  SARS‑CoV‑2 data monitoring and air travel infection prevention. Dr. Popescu received her undergraduate degree from University of Arizona, a M.P.H. and M.A. from University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in biodefense from George Mason University.