Professional Profile
Dr. Pannu is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Prior to joining the Center in 2025, Dr. Pannu spent a decade at Stanford University, where she completed her MD, residency training, and health policy subspecialty fellowship, and was an affiliate at the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health. Dr. Pannu is a licensed and board-certified internal medicine physician and served as a front-line physician during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also previously held an Ugandan medical license due to her work at multiple Ugandan national referral hospitals and clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the Center, Dr. Pannu’s primary areas of research include global health security and biosecurity, pandemic prevention and preparedness, and emerging technology security and governance. Dr. Pannu previously worked on AI-enabled diagnostics at Google and has served as an expert consultant for the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, among others. She serves on the board of Blueprint Biosecurity, a philanthropically funded nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity's ability to prevent pandemics.
Dr. Pannu regularly briefs government officials and policymakers on emerging technologies with security implications, including artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. She applies her medical training and high-tech industry experience towards timely, scientifically rigorous research to help inform policymakers, public health practitioners and the general public regarding actionable biosecurity policy approaches.
Dr. Pannu’s commentary has been featured in the New York Times and TIME Magazine. She has authored/co-authored over 50 publications, including peer-reviewed research, reports, and commentaries on issues related to biosecurity and emerging technology. Her publications have been featured in the journals Science and Nature, among others. She serves as an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security.
Dr. Pannu is an alumnae of the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity (ELBI) Fellowship and completed a BSc in Biology with First Class Honours from McGill University.
