Dr. Rao stayed on at the State Department after finishing his fellowship. And increasingly, his efforts are extending beyond “putting out fires” – as one might regard disarming nuclear weapons and redirecting former weapons scientists – to a proactive science diplomacy. Dr. Rao and his colleagues have launched a Biosecurity Engagement Program*, whose objective is to interact with public health laboratories in Asia and the Middle East to strengthen their ability to detect and deal with both known pathogens and emerging pathogens, whether of natural origin or as a result of bioterrorism. And at this moment, Jason is in Pakistan for 6 months developing collaborations and training programs with Pakistani biological laboratories. Working together, USAID and CTR have selected a number of joint research projects between American and Pakistani scientists on a wide variety of topics ranging from improving the composition of pavement to control of crop plant disease to creating speech-based telephone interfaces for non-literate users.