During the past 40+ years, Dr. Rupprecht has amassed diverse knowledge and professional abilities related to basic scientific and applied biomedical discovery, administrative, communication and leadership skills and considerable global experience in viral disease detection, prevention and control. After a field experience in Panama while working for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, he combined biological sciences and veterinary medicine centered upon zoonotic diseases, with a focus on rabies, while at the Wistar Institute and later at Thomas Jefferson University. This research included development of monoclonal antibodies against lyssaviruses for diagnosis and prophylaxis, as well as the development of a vaccinia-rabies glycoprotein recombinant virus vaccine, which became the focus of his post-doctoral investigation, resulting in the only licensed biologic in the USA for wildlife vaccination, with more than 100 million doses utilized in North America from 1990 to date. Thereafter, for close to 20 years, he was the Chief of the Rabies Program at CDC, Director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Reference & Research on Rabies and Head of the OIE Rabies Reference Laboratory. He has co-authored more than 370 peer-reviewed publications and numerous book chapters. Currently, he serves as a full time independent biomedical consultant with academia, government, industry, and NGOs, as well as an Expert Technical Advisor on Rabies for the PAHO/WHO.
