Dr. Douglas Gladue is a virologist and outbreak-response specialist whose work spans emerging animal, human, and zoonotic viruses, with a focus on translating viral threats into deployable tools for surveillance, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and pandemic preparedness. His expertise includes pen-side and point-of-care diagnostics, genomic surveillance, African swine fever, vaccine development, CRISPR/Cas antivirals, and regulatory strategy for high-consequence infectious disease programs.
Across more than 19 years at USDA Plum Island and in the biotechnology sector, Dr. Gladue has led multidisciplinary teams working at the interface of outbreak science, field deployment, and commercial translation. His work contributed to the development and regulatory licensing of live-attenuated African swine fever vaccine platforms, including the first ASF vaccine commercially produced and deployed in Vietnam. He has also led multinational disease surveillance and sequencing efforts, applying real-time genomics and computational approaches to outbreak monitoring, strain matching, and rapid countermeasure selection.
Dr. Gladue has authored or co-authored more than 160 peer-reviewed publications and holds 11 patents covering vaccines, diagnostics, and antiviral countermeasures. He received the Arthur S. Flemming Award, the United States government's most prestigious honor for federal innovation, recognizing his transformative advances in infectious disease science and outbreak response and establishing him among the United States' most impactful scientific leaders.
At Seek Labs, Dr. Gladue leads CRISPR/Cas therapeutic development, building AI-guided design pipelines that can move from outbreak signal to antiviral candidate in weeks. His work connects field diagnostics, genomic intelligence, and rapidly deployable countermeasures for swine diseases and future animal and zoonotic pandemic threats. He approaches outbreak response as an integrated system, aligning science, regulatory strategy, and deployment planning from the beginning so that countermeasures can move quickly when speed and rigor matter most.