Report Highlights PNNL’s AI-Driven One Health Security

In the wake of an infectious disease, the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment presents a complicated nexus with global impacts. A new report highlights a public workshop hosted by the National Academies Forum on Microbial Threats to address the ecological, social, and technological factors that shape emerging diseases. The report features Lauren Charles, a chief data scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and PNNL’s AI-Driven One Health Security program.

“This effort has been a great opportunity to bring together experts from different agencies and domains to address pressing issues, building collaboration and trust in the community and helping understand different viewpoints to ensure success. We fielded questions from government agencies as well as academics all talking about the problems from different perspectives. That is the type of discourse that translates into actionable, scientific discovery,” said Charles, who serves in the Forum’s One Health Action Collaborative, where experts are collaborating on research related to human, plant, and animal health to explore One Health strategies in the field.

Enabling an integrated future for health security

The report, “Understanding the Introduction of Pathogens into Humans: Preventing Patient Zero: Proceedings of a Workshop,” captures the discussions and outcomes from the 2025 workshop, which convened subject matter experts from across the nation. Participants took a deep dive into how existing policy structures, emerging technologies, and actionable research can improve biosecurity measures and prevention of future disease emergence.

During the workshop, Charles noted that “Animals, plants, and the environment can serve as early warning sensors for human health threats and inform deployment of countermeasures even before humans are affected.” However, she also noted that challenges in information sharing, collaboration, and coordination across government and nongovernment entities can impede effective detection of and response to threats.

Harnessing AI to predict, detect, and mitigate health threats

One growing concept in the biosecurity toolbox is “One Health,” which represents the integration of data from human, animal, plant, and environmental health sectors to improve situational awareness, early warning, and decision-making. Charles shared PNNL’s One Health approach and highlighted a series of tools that leverage AI and other advanced capabilities to enhance situational awareness, early warning, and disease forecasting. Tools like Biofeeds, MedINT, and TREADS are serving a range of One Health collaborators and agencies across the U.S. government and abroad.

“Our laboratory has extensive AI expertise that we’ve used to forecast real-world events, and it just made sense to apply it to this challenge. The result is a comprehensive, integrated AI-driven approach to transforming data access, harmonization, and analysis to enhance early warning systems and to better predict, detect, and mitigate health security threats,” Charles said.

To learn more about how PNNL is applying AI to scientific discovery and innovation, visit the Center for AI @PNNL web page.