Lauren M. Sauer, PhD, MSc
Professor, Department of Environmental, Agricultural and Occupational Health, UNMC College of Public Health
Deputy Director, Office for the Advancement of Military Medicine
Co-Director, Biodefense and Health Security MSIA Sub-plan
Lauren Sauer, PhD, MSc, is a professor in the UNMC College of Public Health Department of Environmental, Agricultural and Occupational Health. She also serves as deputy director of the UNMC Office for the Advancement of Military Medicine.
Dr. Sauer is an adjunct associate professor of emergency medicine in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of International Health, where she serves as a senior adviser for the Johns Hopkins Biocontainment Unit. She also is an adjunct faculty member of the Boston University Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research.
Dr. Sauer has been working in the field of disaster and public health emergency research and education for almost two decades and has deployed for over a dozen disaster, outbreak and emergency responses, and on the US Navy’s humanitarian assistance missions Continuing Promise and Pacific Partnership. For almost a decade, she has served as the assistant director of operations for the Johns Hopkins Go Team, a deployable medical asset, and has worked remotely and on the ground on several disaster responses for them, including Hurricane Katrina, the 2009 California Wildfires, the Haiti earthquake, the Pakistan floods and Hurricanes Irma and Maria in the US Virgin Islands and the 2013-16 West Africa Ebola outbreak.
Dr. Sauer has advised national governments, research and response networks and nonprofit organizations on preparedness and response efforts. She has authored more than 80 journal articles in the fields of outbreak response, bio-emergencies and disaster preparedness and response.
Dr. Sauer is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats. She previously served as director of the Special Pathogens Research Network, the research arm of the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center.
She is an alumnus of the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity program at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, where she is a contributing scholar. She also serves on the American Red Cross Scientific Advisory Committee, where she sits on the Disaster Preparedness Subcommittee, supporting the Red Cross’ operations with a scientifically sound evidence base. She previously served as director of operations for the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response and as director of research for the Johns Hopkins Biocontainment Unit, where she ran the inpatient COVID-19 biobank and served on the COVID-19 research steering committee. She previously served as the Johns Hopkins focal point for its partnership with the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak and Alert Response Network. She currently serves as the GOARN research chair and the focal point for UNMC. She also co-directs UNMC’s WHO collaborating center in support of GOARN Operations.
Dr. Sauer's research focuses mainly on human subjects research in bio-emergencies and acute disasters, as well as immediate post-disaster and post-outbreak infrastructure, including the impact of disasters and outbreaks on healthcare systems, resource availability and access and the impact of policy on preparedness and response capabilities. Much of her work is focused on the ethical implementation of human subjects research and navigating the regulatory environment, as well as the way policy, guidance and new science impacts disaster and outbreak affected populations.
Her research has focused on providing healthcare systems tools that facilitate implementation of policy requirements and clinical trials in emergencies. Planning tools for hospital bed capacity, patient management and other disaster and outbreak related needs allow hospitals and healthcare systems to break down complex, potentially unfamiliar concepts into manageable pieces. Additionally, she has focused on appropriateness of disaster response and aid for affected populations to observe positive and negative effects of distribution of aid, implementation of response strategies such as novel therapeutics, and other resources.