Matthew Watson
Senior Analyst, Senior Research Associate

Professional Profile

Mr. Watson is Senior Analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Senior Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His primary research interests include the health sector response to high-impact epidemics and other disasters, public health preparedness and policy, emergency medicine, infectious disease epidemiology, and biosurveillance. Mr. Watson serves as manager for the team of analysts at the Center, program manager for the Center’s Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative, and as an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security. He also edits the Center’s daily newsletter, Health Security Headlines, and the Center’s blog, The Bifurcated Needle.

Mr. Watson’s interest and experience in disaster preparedness and response began on an operational level as a paramedic and firefighter. At the Center, Mr. Watson has contributed to numerous projects aimed at building US capacity to respond to infectious disease emergencies and major disasters both in the United States and internationally. Mr. Watson was the lead on a project assessing the national capacity and applications of the US Medical Reserve Corps and contributed to multiple projects assessing New York City’s healthcare surge capacity in emergencies. He has provided expert review and feedback to the development of biosurveillance systems and detection and diagnostics technology approaches for the federal government.

Mr. Watson has also contributed significantly to a number of projects focused on biological threat characterization and risk assessment. He was a core member of the project team that studied the US Biological Threat Characterization Program and provided recommendations to the government, which were published in Science. He has also provided expert input to strategic development of chemical and biological security priorities for the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Watson is an author of the article series “Federal Funding for Health Security,” which is published annually and provides a unique analysis of federal health security programs and their associated funding levels.

Mr. Watson has completed graduate coursework in public health and earned his bachelor of science in emergency medicine from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006.