Janika Schmitt is a Fellow at the Institute for Progress, an innovation policy think tank in Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on policies and technologies that prevent and mitigate future pandemics, including topics like biosurveillance and biological research security. Additionally, she manages a working group on Pandemic Prevention and Biosecurity at the Global Health Hub Germany. Previously, Janika worked on a pathogen-agnostic early detection system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed her doctoral research in virology at the University of Cambridge. Janika studied medicine in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Oxford.