Global Health Security: Vital to National Security

As a high school student, Kunal Rambhia designed genetic mutants of green fluorescent protein to produce different colors. He was awed by biology’s transformational potential and sure that’s where he’d make his mark.

Now a biodefense expert at MITRE, Rambhia went on to pursue biomedical engineering, “because engineers build things.”

That decision led him to a challenge of significant proportions: building a resilient global health security ecosystem. It’s an enormous undertaking, one that includes working to ensure the right medicine is available to the right person at the right time, whether it’s an average day or during a pandemic.

Rambhia puts it this way: “If oncology products can’t reach people with cancer, or insulin is unavailable for children with diabetes, then we move into short-term survivability. That matters to both civilian and military populations.”

Rambhia specializes in medical countermeasures, products regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use during a public health emergency.

Access to medicines and medical countermeasures as well as a globally competitive biopharma industry are vital to national security and economic prosperity, he says. But it’s not always easy getting stakeholders to see the link. That’s Rambhia’s focus.

An All-Stakeholder Effort

Rambhia’s work exemplifies MITRE’s role as a connector. He leads our collaboration with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and its Pharmaceutical Countermeasures and Infrastructure division.

He’s also group leader of medical countermeasures in MITRE Labs and supports the work of our Global Health Security and Biotechnology team, a role he values for the chance to “help people grow and thrive and do more of what they truly love.”

Rambhia leads a project team that’s designing scenario-driven exercises to pressure test biopharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities. The goal? Build a program to address key shortcomings observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The exercises will assess preparedness and response capabilities for a variety of threats. Ultimately, they’ll test technical and other constraints for rapid response of multiple biomanufacturing platforms under specific situations (a pandemic, or a biological attack).

He notes that MITRE brings multidisciplinary expertise, trusted partnerships, and an unbiased, data-driven focus to these timely efforts.

For example, a recent biomanufacturing capabilities assessment paired senior leaders from government and the biopharmaceutical industry with experts in manufacturing, policy, supply chain, and regulatory issues.

The experts explored the requirements of transferring live virus vaccine manufacturing to a U.S.-based contract development and manufacturing organization to expand domestic manufacturing​.

Collaborating during a period of relative calm, Rambhia says, builds cross-agency relationships. “Knowing your counterparts and what drives their decisions improves overall emergency response. You don’t want to be exchanging contact information during a crisis."

Public Service Commitment

Rambhia did a deep dive into health security as a policy analyst at the Center for Health Security in Baltimore.

“I cut my teeth on issues such as how hospitals get ready for a widespread emergency and how to effectively distribute pandemic vaccines nationwide,” says Rambhia, who holds a master’s in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan.

He was drawn to MITRE’s public interest mission and the opportunity “to help shape community discourse to tackle complex health challenges.”

He also jumped at the chance to work with MITRE’s internationally recognized biotechnology and global health expert Monique K. Mansoura, Ph.D.

Today, he and Mansoura collaborate with global health security leaders in government at the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Commerce, Department of State, new White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, and other national and international leaders in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and academia.

The nonpartisan Council on Strategic Risks recently named Rambhia a Mid-Career Biodefense Fellow. As part of his fellowship, he’s engaging with experts on biological threat reduction and biosecurity to foster international cooperation.

Outside of work, Rambhia and his wife are busy parents of a toddler. He credits MITRE’s three-month parental leave benefit for the chance to “form a close relationship with this tiny new human.”