Portfolio
Biotech Governance & Global Policy
Accelerating bioscience and biotechnology advances offer tremendous potential societal benefits for improving public health, fostering economic development, and protecting the environment, and more. However, without proper safeguards, these same tools could be accidentally misused or deliberately exploited to cause harm—with the potential for catastrophic global consequences. Governments have struggled to develop oversight systems that keep pace with rapid technological progress, resulting in major gaps in national and international capabilities to safeguard the tools of modern bioscience and biotechnology.
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Aparupa leads the Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction Initiative (BIRRI).
COVID Response
Aparupa led COVID-19 operations during 2020-21 for UC Merced and local communities, serving as a subject matter expert on health and safety. She led a team of health and safety professionals to train critical and essential workers on safe operational protocols, quarantine and isolation protocol set up, and decontamination and disinfection operation set up.
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As part of UC Merced's COVID Response Center, she developed protocols for on-campus testing and proper shipping of test samples to UC Davis and UC San Francisco.
Global Biosecurity Engagement
Aparupa has multiple engagements with different international stakeholders on building global capacity to fight infectious diseases and enhancing biosafety-biosecurity governance.
