Ilaria Capua

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Ilaria Capua (born 21 April 1966 in Rome) is an Italian virologist and former politician, best known for her research on influenza viruses, particularly avian influenza, and her efforts promoting open access to genetic information on emerging viruses as part of pre-pandemic preparedness efforts. Capua is currently a professor at the Institute of Food and Agricultural Science (IFAS), and has a joint appointment with the College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Public Health and Health Professions at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, U.S. She was recruited to direct and lead the UF One Health Center of Excellence in research and training. A veterinarian by training, Capua has mainly worked in the field of veterinary virology and zoonotic viral infections. She worked for over twenty years in the network of the Istituti Zooprofilattici in Italy, and headed the national and international reference laboratory for Newcastle disease and Avian Influenza at IZSVE for over ten years. In response to the 1999-2000 outbreak of avian flu in Italy, Capua and colleagues proposed and developed a novel strategy for vaccinating commercial poultry against the disease, which was adopted and enabled the industry to avoid a complete shutdown. In February 2006, Capua drew international attention when she challenged the existing system for granting scientists access to genetic material sequenced from influenza viruses. At the peak of the H5N1 panzootic, Capua decided to post the sequence of the first H5N1 African virus on a publicly accessible website (GenBank) rather than contribute the data to a password-protected database maintained in Los Alamos and accessible only to a small group of researchers. During this time, Capua led an international campaign promoting free access to genetic sequences derived from influenza viruses and other viruses with pandemic potential. One observer described Capua as "belonging to a...