The Hoover Institution Program on Bio-Strategies and Leadership invites you to A Strategy for Biosecurity Victory on Monday, October 6, 2025, from 12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. PT in the Annenberg Conference Room, George P. Shultz Building.
Biology is advancing faster than our ability to secure it. Pandemics, accidental releases, and the misuse of biotechnology highlight the urgent need for new strategies. At the same time, biotechnology offers powerful tools to defend against these risks—enabling real-time surveillance, rapid vaccines, advanced diagnostics, and next-generation treatments. Bio-Strategies and Leadership at the Hoover Institution addresses these challenges in its first foundational report, outlining a plan to secure biology in perpetuity. This launch event convenes the report’s authors and distinguished contributors for a discussion of the concrete steps needed to create a world free from biological threats.
About the Speakers
Drew Endy is a science fellow and senior fellow (courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. He leads Hoover’s Bio-Strategy and Leadership effort, which focuses on keeping increasingly biotic futures secure, flourishing, and democratic. He co-founded iGEM and bioengineering programs at MIT and Stanford. Endy advises global organizations on synthetic biology and biosecurity, and was named one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.” He earned his PhD from Dartmouth.
Rear Admiral Kenneth Bernard, USPHS (Ret.), is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and is a member of the Hoover Bio-Strategies and Leadership group. RADM Bernard served in the George W. Bush White House as Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense and Assistant Surgeon General. After leaving the U.S. Government, he became the Senior Political Adviser to the Director-General of the World Health Organization.
In the Clinton White House, he was the first-ever Senior Adviser for Security and Health on the National Security Council Staff, dealing with bioterrorism, smallpox, HIV/AIDS, and other threats as they affect national security. RADM Bernard served as the International Health Attaché at the U.S. Mission to the UN in Geneva. He began his career as a physician and a viral disease epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control.
He received his AB degree from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.D. from the University of California, Davis, a DTM&H from the University of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is board certified in internal medicine, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Emily Clise Tully is the Senior Director of National Security at Ginkgo Bioworks and a Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, working at the intersection of national security and emerging tech. She helps the international and US national security communities understand and incorporate biotechnologies. From 2018-2022, she served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, working to reorient the post-9/11 national security community to America’s emerging strategic conflict with the Chinese Communist Party, profoundly shaped by technology. Prior to her time in the Senate, Emily spent nearly a decade at the CIA, where she wrote for the president as a political analyst, served a warzone tour, and served in leadership positions in the Director’s Area in the Office of Public Affairs and Congressional Affairs. A Carnegie Mellon University graduate and proud native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she lives in Washington, DC with her family.
