Professional Profile
Alex Zhu is an Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their primary interests include global health security, global health equity, pandemic prevention and preparedness, and global catastrophic biological risks. At the Center, Alex supports various project efforts, including improving indoor air quality, contributing to health emergency communications research, and protecting critical infrastructure from the next pandemic.
Alex earned an MSPH in global disease epidemiology and control from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their thesis focused on identifying factors associated with developing opportunistic infections in people living with HIV in Lusaka, Zambia. Alex was a Summer Research Fellow with the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative and focused on the Biological Weapons Convention. Alex earned a BS in neuroscience and a minor in comparative history of ideas from the University of Washington, Seattle. As an undergraduate, they worked in a pathology lab researching genes associated with the development of Alzheimer's-related proteins in fruit flies.
Previously, Alex worked at Epic Systems on EDI project management, technical support, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In addition to their work at the Center, Alex writes poetry.
