Jens H. Kuhn MS, MD, PhD

Jens H. Kuhn, M.D./Ph.D., Ph.D., M.S., is a principal at Tunnell Government Services (TGS), Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, tasked as the lead virologist (contractor) at NIAID’s new maximum-containment facility, the IRF-Frederick. He is also TGS team leader for all IRF-Frederick TGS contractors. Dr. Kuhn specializes in highly virulent viral pathogens. He is the author of Filoviruses: A Compendium of 40 Years of Epidemiological, Clinical, and Laboratory Studies (Vienna: Springer, 2008) and co-author of The Soviet Biological Weapons Program – A History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012) and has studied and worked in Germany, Italy, Malta, Russia, South Africa, and South Korea. In the United States, he rotated through or worked at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; the Arthropod-Borne Infectious Disease Laboratory (AIDL) in Fort Collins, Colorado; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia; and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Maryland. Dr. Kuhn was the first western scientist with permission to work in the former Soviet biological warfare facility SRCVB "Vector" in Siberia, Russia, within the U.S. Department of Defense Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program.

Dr. Kuhn was a contributor to the Center for International and Security Studies at Marylands Controlling Dangerous Pathogens Project and a member of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferations CBW Scientist Working Group. He is currently chairing the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) Filoviridae and Mononegavirales Study Groups and is a subject-matter expert for the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) for all mononegaviruses; is a member of the editorial boards of Applied Biosafety - Journal of the American Biological Safety Association, Archives of Virology, BioMed Research International, Journal of Bioterrorism and Biodefense, PLoS One, PLoS Pathogens, Viruses, Virologica Sinica, Voprosy Virusologii, and World Journal of Virology; was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ committee on animal models for assessing countermeasures to bioterrorism agents; and is continuously involved with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. Department of State bioengagement efforts in the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) region, Turkey, and the Newly Independent States.