J. Patrick Fitch, Ph.D.

J. Patrick Fitch, Ph.D., is Associate Laboratory Director at Los Alamos National Laboratory responsible for the Chemical, Earth and Life Sciences Directorate and the Special Office for COVID-19 R&D. He also leads the COVID-19 Testing Team for DOE’s National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory. For more than a decade, he directed one of the nation’s largest maximum biocontainment laboratories (BSL-2, 3, and 4) and oversaw the National Biological Threat Characterization Center and the National Bioforensic Analysis Center performing thousands of analyses each year. Pat is a biodefense and infectious disease expert with related experience in computing, medical device design, and the human genome program. Pat has chaired and served on biodefense panels of the National Academies and served on the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. He is a Fellow of AAAS and a senior member of IEEE. Pat earned his Ph.D. in Engineering from Purdue University. He may be reached at [email protected].