Alexandra M. Levitt, PhD is a health scientist at the CDC who began her scientific career as a research scientist at New York University Medical School. During a fellowship year as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Diplomacy Fellow assigned to the US Department of State, Dr. Levitt coordinated a government-wide review of the global health and security threat posed by emerging infectious diseases. Since joining the CDC in 1995, she has prepared policy reports on global health, bioterrorism, and pandemic influenza, and drafted critical case studies of large and unusual outbreak responses, including the 1994 outbreak of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the United States.; the 1994 outbreak of plague in India; and the 1995 outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Dr. Levitt resides in Brooklyn, New York.