Scott P. Layne, MD

Associate Professor
UCLA School of Public Health

Before joining UCLA in 1994, Dr. Layne was a staff member at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

Dr. Layne is known for cross disciplinary work involving biology, physics, and policy related issues. He is a board certified physician in internal medicine and infectious diseases and is also trained in applied physics. He has authored over 45 publications, including three U.S. patents on methods to access and operate high-throughput laboratories. He is an editor of Firepower in the Lab: Automation in the Fight Against Infectious Diseases and Bioterrorism published by Joseph Henry Press in 2001 and also of Jane’s Chem-Bio Handbook, second edition.

In 1988, Dr. Layne organized the workshop A National Effort to Model AIDS Epidemiology for the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and oversaw the publication of a White House report that identified and influenced AIDS research priorities in the United States. At the same time, his numerical research on the HIV/AIDS epidemic used computer models and epidemiologic data to understand the growth of past infections and predict new ones in the United States and elsewhere. Subsequently, his basic scientific research on HIV used mathematical models and laboratory experiments to understand the kinetics of viral infection and examine how anti-receptor drugs and immunoglobulins block viral attachment and entry into cells.

In 1999, Dr. Layne organized the meeting Automation in Threat Reduction and Infectious Disease Research: Needs and New Direction under the auspices of the Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Engineering. It focused on grand challenges posed by natural infectious diseases, food safety and security, and manmade threats from bioterrorism. It also examined how available science and technology can help to solve such problems. What emerged was a plan to build new kinds of high-throughput laboratories and databases that enable infectious disease surveillance and intervention efforts on larger scales.

Before September 11, the plan helped to shape scientific thinking but, after it and the anthrax letter attacks, the plan galvanized a broader consensus. In 2002, the National Research Council published a comprehensive report Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism. The report offers many far-reaching recommendations, including ones to build high-throughput laboratories and databases against natural and manmade infectious disease outbreaks and also to develop forensics capabilities against bioterror agents.

Dr. Layne teaches graduate level courses at UCLA on infectious diseases, terrorism and mass destruction, and public health responses to bioterrorism. He is also an instructor on bioterrorism preparation and response for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and lectures throughout America in this capacity.