Pardis Sabeti, a 2026 Rolex Laureate, is the latest recipient of The Rolex Award for her project Preventing Epidemics.
As a medical geneticist, Pardis Sabeti has been fighting virus outbreaks and pandemics in West Africa for decades using genomics to understand and impact infectious disease. Known for her work in the comprehension of COVID-19, Ebola, and Lassa fever spreads, she has long maintained that “early detection remains one of global health’s most effective but underfunded strategies.”
The Iranian-American scientist is a professor at Harvard University and MIT, and runs her own lab, Sabeti Lab, fighting virus outbreaks and pandemics. While balancing her lucrative career as a medical geneticist, Sabeti still finds time to be the lead singer and writer for the rock band Thousand Days. Sabeti reminds us that the best research comes from a well-rounded brain, and a passion to use our powers for good.
Sabeti, one of Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year in 2014, a member of the Time 100 most influential people of 2015, and an inductee of the National Academy of Medicine is one of the five Rolex Laureates for 2026. The Rolex Award is her most recent accolade, and as a Laureate she plans to develop new, life-saving research.
For the 50th anniversary of The Rolex Awards, the brand has announced their five Laureates. The five new, all-women Laureates are evidence of an international effort to protect the planet.
The Rolex Laureates have been known to make significant contributions worldwide in improving life and protecting the planet. Since its beginning in 1976, the initiative has supported 165 Laureates. What’s special about this program is that, unlike many traditional awards, this program doesn’t honor past achievements, but instead it provides resources for new and ongoing projects — aiming to contribute its best effort to planet conservation.
Sierra Leone is currently facing a deadly mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) outbreak. The most dangerous part of it is that the virus is changing. With genomic analysis, scientists have discovered a new, fast-moving variant of mpox. Sierra Leone has faced epidemics like this before, back in 2014 with the Ebola virus. Scientists learned the lesson that delaying detection leads to deadly outcomes — it allows time for the virus to spread and mutate, becoming more fatal over time.
Her research has pioneered the development of global infectious-disease surveillance initiatives like Sentinel and Lookout led by Sabeti and Christian Happi, Professor at Redeemer’s University in Nigeria.
The Rolex Award will allow Sabeti to continue this thread of studying and preventing infectious disease, while starting new research. With the funds from The Rolex Award, Sabeti will begin developing and testing a new portable diagnostic tool to use in remote communities in Sierra Leone. This tool can catch the viral outbreaks before they spread, giving her research the potential to save millions of lives.
Image courtesy of Rolex by Oliver Douliery.
