¶ Rita Colwell
Rita Rossi Colwell is an American environmental biologist and administrator. She served as the first female director of the National Science Foundation. She is the founder, president and chair of CosmosID[1] and member of the board of directors of EcoHealth Alliance[2] and the Global Council for Science and the Environment.[3] She holds professorships at University of Maryland, College Park and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.[1:1]
¶ History
In September 1992, Colwell was announced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a member of a new advisory committee on food.[4]
Colwell served as director of the National Science Foundation from 1998-2004.[1:2]
Colwell founded CosmosID in 2008.[5]
In November 2012, EcoHealth Alliance announced it had appointed Colwell to its board of directors.[6]
¶ COVID-19
On February 19, 2020, The Lancet published a letter titled "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19" co-authored by Colwell and numerous colleagues at EcoHealth Alliance, in which they "strongly condemn[ed] conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin." Other notable authors included Peter Daszak, Dennis Caroll, Christian Drosten, Jeremy Farrar and William Karesh.[7]
¶ External links
Rita R. Colwell, Biography. National Science Foundation. Retrieved October 24, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20231024203747/https://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/colwell/colwell_bio.jsp ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Board of Directors. EcoHealth Alliance. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.02.27-070834/https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/board-of-directors ↩︎
Board of Directors. Global Council for Science and the Environment. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://web.archive.org/web/20210411074157/https://www.gcseglobal.org/board-directors ↩︎
Stone, B. (1992, September 10). FDA Establishes New Advisory Committee for Foods. Food and Drug Administration. https://web.archive.org/web/19970506023101/http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/ANSWERS/ANS00424.html ↩︎
About Us. CosmosID. Retrieved September 23, 2021, from https://web.archive.org/web/20210923033322/https://www.cosmosid.com/about-us/ ↩︎
EcoHealth Alliance Announces Dr. Rita Colwell’s Election to Board of Directors. (2012, November 27). EcoHealth Alliance. http://archive.today/2023.07.27-184033/https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2012/11/ecohealth-alliance-announces-dr-rita-colwells-election-to-board-of-directors ↩︎
Calisher, C., Carroll, D., Colwell, R., Corley, R. B., Daszak, P., Drosten, C., Enjuanes, L., Farrar, J., Field, H., Golding, J., Gorbalenya, A., Haagmans, B., Hughes, J. M., Karesh, W. B., Keusch, G. T., Lam, S. K., Lubroth, J., Mackenzie, J. S., Madoff, L., & Mazet, J. (2020). Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19. The Lancet, 395(10226), e42–e43. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30418-9 ↩︎