Experts in the News

"This is a great collaboration. But vaccine development is not a fast process, and it's not clear whether we would have a vaccine ready to use before this current epidemic ends," said fellow Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). Hotez's group at the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at BCM is working to develop the vaccine with other U.S. institutions such as the University of Texas Medical Branch and the New York Blood Center, and with the Virology Center at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.

"I believe it's going to be obsolete on arrival when we get the new 100-year floodplain maps," said Rice faculty scholar Jim Blackburn.

“If foreign companies like Chevron leave Venezuela, [the country's] oil industry could virtually fall into the hands of the Russians,” said energy fellow Francisco Monaldi.

The recent U.S. conviction of a woman from Mexico who led a sophisticated international drug trafficking network highlights the often overlooked, and increasingly common, role of women in organized crime groups. “This isn’t an isolated case, and I don’t doubt that there are more women acting in that capacity that just haven’t been arrested yet," said nonresident scholar Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera.

"If the Trump plan is not based on the fundamental principle of 'land for peace,' then I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere because you cannot deny Palestinian self determination," said Ambassador Edward Djerejian in an interview with Britain's SkyNews. If the plan involves only security, economic or other arrangements, "something short of a territorial compromise that would eventually have an independent Palestinian state living in peace and security next to an independent Israeli state," the plan will not have any traction.