The Real CSI Deal

As the chief science officer for the CDC, Dr. Popovic solves the health puzzle — whether it's influenza or anthrax — and sometimes works against the clock.

by Tom Barry

June 1, 2008

T here's an American flag - folded and framed - on the wall of Dr. Tanja Popovic's office at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an office housed in a gleaming new mid-rise off Clifton Road in Atlanta.
   
The flag was flown over the U.S. Capitol on Aug. 24, 2006, in honor of Popovic's work for the CDC, including an intense stretch in late 2001, when she headed the CDC's 43-person anthrax investigation team.
   
"I'm not a warm and fuzzy person, but that flag makes me feel sentimental," says Popovic, the CDC's chief science officer. "I have my old home country, but this is my country now, and I love it. To work for the best place in this country and to be recognized for the work - to have my own staff think to do this - was just incredible."

   
There may be better ambassadors for the CDC than this widely traveled, multilingual native of Croatia, but she'll do nicely until that person shows up. Her enthusiasm - her passion - for the work is palpable.
   
"The CDC has a unique group of people," Popovic says. "They're here because they feel they can contribute to protecting and saving lives, and there's an energy and passion about what they do. Any time you hear of an outbreak of something - and people don't know what's going on - the CDC is the agency that's called in to help. To be part of that is so exciting."
   
As the 15,000-employee organization's chief science officer, Popovic has a thick portfolio. Her 100-person operation determines CDC's scientific priorities and makes sure that its scientists have sufficient resources to carry out their mission, no matter where in the world they may be.

   
"It's not about me, it's about the people who do the science," she says. "I want them to have everything they need so that they can go out and detect spinach E. coli or peanut butter salmonella or a measles outbreak or whatever it is. What can we give them so that they can do their job better?"    

Popovic's staff also oversees compliance with research regulations, weighs in on ethical issues and reviews the small mountain of publications produced by the Atlanta-based federal agency.
   
"All the articles or communications that have some scientific impact go through us, such as the 2,000 peer-reviewed publications the CDC publishes a year," she says. "We also make sure that what we say is scientifically sound when we testify before Congress or talk with the WHO [World Health Organization] or any of our other partners.
   
"Is it all true and factual?" she says. "And are we communicating it in a way that's transparently clear?"

   
What's transparently clear is that Popovic made a bold move in uprooting her life in Croatia nearly two decades ago and transplanting it to Georgia soil.
   
Lilburn, where the 52-year-old Popovic lives today, is a long way from Zagreb, where she was born and spent most of her life. Both of her parents were physicians. Her father was a professor of public health at the University of Zagreb and also worked for the WHO; her mother was a clinical microbiologist.
   
Like father, like mother, like daughter. Popovic holds both a medical degree and a doctorate in microbiology as well as a master's degree in clinical pharmacology. She became a physician in Zagreb, specializing in infectious diseases in children, and also serving as a clinical microbiologist and associate professor at the university.
 

During that first stage of her professional life, Popovic married her husband, Boris Uroic, a mechanical engineer, and had two children, Igor and Iva.
   
Then in 1989, Popovic joined the CDC on a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship, her mission to study diarrhea-causing bacteria. Although she was 33 and well along in a successful career, the CDC was a siren song she couldn't resist.
   
"I wanted to experience the CDC because it has this unbelievable image outside the United States," says Popovic, who in high school spent a year in Detroit as a foreign exchange student. "I didn't come with the pretense of staying. I came to get the experience, build relationships and go back."

   
So much for those plans, which changed when the CDC offered her a position as a laboratory scientist. "It was a dream opportunity. I wanted to work in public health, and I loved the CDC. I went back and talked to my husband and parents. Our children were 7 and 9, young enough so that they'd be able to adjust quickly. I also wanted them to experience different things. And if it didn't work out, we could always go back."
   
Another factor weighed heavily as well. On the horizon was the bitter religious and ethnic strife that would explode into violence across the former Yugoslavia a few years later.
   
"My family's a mixed family," Popovic says. "My mother is Croatian, my father Serbian. I couldn't judge people based on their ethnicity. That was irrelevant to me."
   
As a WHO representative, her father had traveled widely. "We had people from all over the world - all races and religions - in our house since I was a child. I couldn't make decisions about hiring or firing or whatever based on ethnicity. I just couldn't judge people so narrowly."
   
The CDC culture stood in sharp contrast to those ancient, simmering prejudices. "Here there are people of all colors and accents, and it doesn't matter what your beliefs are. It's how well you do your job, and I'm all for that kind of competition."
   
So the Popovics packed up and moved. Her husband, an engineer in the nuclear power industry back home - a career not readily transportable to the U.S. market - retrained and now works for a company that designs and installs security systems in airports, schools, hospitals and other facilities.
   
As a laboratory scientist for the CDC, Popovic traveled extensively - in Africa, Europe, Australia and Russia - training others in the detection of infectious diseases. (Fluent in English, which she speaks with a slight accent, Popovic also has a basic command of French, German, Spanish and Russian.) Her résumé boasts stints as chief of the CDC's Diphtheria Reference Unit and as co-director of a WHO collaboration center on bacterial meningitis.
   
Popovic, who has written more than 150 scientific publications and book chapters on the molecular epidemiology of infectious diseases, assumed her present duties in mid-2006, after a two-year stint as associate director of science.
   
"Sometimes I feel they must be crazy to let me do all the things we do here ...," she says with a laugh. "But it's one reason I love the CDC. I came here with an unusual name, an accent and degrees from this country many people don't know where the heck it is. But here you're judged on your merits. What more could you ask?"
   
"Hyper-competent" is how Dr. Bradley Perkins, the CDC's chief strategy and innovation officer, describes Popovic.
    "
There's really not a task she's not willing to take on, and she's capable of doing it usually much better than other people," he says. "Tanja gives the job everything she has, and it shows. She's fun but very professional and serious about her work.'"
   
Exhibit A was her performance in the wake of the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news organizations and to U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle. Five people died of anthrax inhalation in one of the more disturbing chapters in recent U.S. history.
   
Over several months - often working around-the-clock - Popovic's lab tested nearly 2,400 specimens from patients and the environment for the presence of anthrax spores. The intricate detective work showed the anthrax came from a common source, a finding critical to the probe.
   
Her contributions extended beyond that, Perkins says. "We worked together preparing for bioterrorism in the lead up to the anthrax attacks. Tanja did a superb job of developing the methodology and training for the state public health laboratories on that. She finished six months before the attacks, barely in the nick of time. Without that effort and her leadership, we would have been in big trouble."
   
During that period, Popovic virtually lived at work for weeks on end. At one point, her son, then a college student, called and asked, "Are you alive?"
   
Nearly seven years later, she looks back on her lab's work with great pride. "We didn't catch [the anthrax culprit], but the work our agency and others did prevented many, many more people from becoming ill." 
   
All in all, it was a form of payback for Popovic. "Throughout my CDC career, there was always somebody who recognized what I could contribute, who pushed me even when I felt I couldn't do something. This was my way of giving back to my agency and to my country."
   
Perkins calls Popovic "a superb scientist who has flourished even more" in her current role.
   
"People sense the passion she has for her work, which brings a high level of respect from her peers," he says. "She's also a fantastic communicator, even though she's not communicating in her native language. Seeing her growth as a leader has been one of the great professional experiences I've had in my time at CDC."
   
Mike Cassidy, president and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance, says the relationship between GRA and the CDC has never been closer, thanks in large measure to CDC Director Julie Gerberding and to Popovic. Cassidy notes that Popovic serves on the advisory board of a major GRA initiative on vaccine development.
   
"Tanja has been a great leader in bringing people together at CDC to foster collaboration between the CDC's scientific enterprise and the scientific enterprise [of Georgia's research university]," Cassidy says. "She's very bright and has helped us think through matters that are very complicated, given the number of institutions involved. In terms of our universities having a dialogue with the CDC, she's opened doors that probably have never been opened before."
   
While the CDC is best known for its work on infectious diseases, Popovic stresses that its mission is far broader. Her operation - part of the director's office - is also charged with weighing the relative merits of devoting resources to everything from nanotechnology to workplace health to climate change to genomics.
   
"As a nation and world, we're creating so much new knowledge, but it doesn't get to people fast enough," she says. "The question is, how do we take all this fabulous data and science that we have and make sure it [improves lives]"?
   
One current focus, she says, is on researching diseases and conditions that afflict people at different stages in life. What are the key health issues for children? Why do so many adolescents commit suicide? What can be done to prevent older people from developing multiple chronic diseases?
   
"Another focus is on where people spend a lot of time - at home, in school, at work - and trying to improve the quality of life there," Popovic says. "We're also looking at how we can be better prepared, not only for possible bioterrorism but also for earthquakes, hurricanes and other naturally occurring disasters.
   
"The big picture involves mobile health issues, too," she says. "The CDC is investing a lot [to combat] HIV and malaria. Do we need more research to develop vaccines? Do we need research on behavioral changes? Research is not just about looking under a microscope; it's also about [studying human behavior]."
   
Recent key advances include the reconstruction of the deadly 1918 flu virus - offering insight into other viruses - and methods to detect botulism far more quickly. "Advances like that are going on all the time at the CDC," she says.
   
A naturalized citizen since 2000, Popovic says she's here to stay, and indeed her stateside roots have deepened considerably. Son Igor earned an MBA and is now a consultant in San Francisco; daughter Iva is a lawyer in New York City. Both are Georgia Tech graduates, and Popovic is quick to say which side of the Yellow Jacket/Bulldog divide she comes down on. Popovic's sister and brother-in-law, meanwhile, are pathologists at Grady Hospital.
   
Popovic's work has carried her to about 50 countries, and she still loves to travel. She visits Zagreb at least a couple times a year, and her parents come to see her here as well. "When I did the front-line [scientific] training, I used to travel to countries and stay for a couple weeks at a time. I could go to people's homes and learn about their lifestyle and culture."
   
Photography is another abiding interest. "I'm not really good at it, but I document everything," Popovic says. She shows her visitor a photo album that includes a picture of her with the actor Will Smith, who at the time was preparing for the futuristic plague-thriller movie "I Am Legend."
   
"I showed that picture to my kids," she laughs. "That's when I became cool."
   
While her work week usually stretches to 65 to 70 hours, Popovic says she's living her dream job, in an organization that's not about paper-pushing bureaucracy but about saving lives.
   
She cites another film - "Pay It Forward" - to elaborate. The movie was about a young boy's efforts to make the world a better place, one life at a time.
   
"I've been fortunate to have received a lot, and I want to give back," Popovic says. "I worked as a physician, and the feeling is similar at the CDC. Physicians save lives one by one. Here you can help prevent hundreds and even thousands of people from becoming ill. It's an unbelievable feeling."