Florian Krammer went to America to research emerging viruses at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. During the pandemic, he explained the crisis to Austrians. Now, he is returning to his homeland.

"I grew up outside a small mountain village in western Styria and developed aninterest in science at an early age. In my PhD at the BOKU in Vienna, I focused on influenza viruses. After that, I applied as a postdoc to the top eight influenza labs worldwide. I received three offers, and my wife told me, well, we’re not going to France, and we’re not going to Wisconsin. So, I ended up in New York.

Here in the U.S., the academic career path works a bit differently; the structures aren’tas rigid. To become a professor in the U.S. depends more on how much I work than on how long I’ve been doing my work (like in Europe). And I work very hard. That allowed me to gain independence relatively quickly, set up my own lab, and from there, things progressed rapidly.

For me, it was important to see Austria from the outside, to gain a different perspective. We are very focused on the European and North American markets, which might make sense commercially, but if you work in healthcare, you really need to havea global perspective.

If I come up with an idea that works well in a country like Austria, I can also useit to bene fit people in low- and middle-income countries. As a founder, for example, I could ask myself: How would my idea help someone living in Indonesia?

One positive side effect of working in the English-speaking world is that the language helps me simplify things when explaining them.

German technical vocabulary is less familiar to me—and that might actually be a good thing. If I have a problem with my car and take it to the mechanic, they’ll explain what’s wrong. But I also expect them to explain it in a non-technical way that I can understand. Just as a mechanic is a specialist, so is avirologist, and using non-technical terms when talking to people who are not virologists or immunologists helps.

Why is communication so important to me? Especially when I look ahead to the nextpandemic— because there will definitely be another one. It’s very likely that it will be an influenza pandemic, as we’ve had four of those in the past hundred years: in 1918 'Spanish flu', 1957 'Asian flu', 1968 'Hong Kong flu', and 2009' Swine flu'.

Technically,we are well prepared. For one, there are already antiviral drugs for influenza with different mechanisms of action. Additionally, influenza vaccines can be adapted fairly quickly to a new strain.

Traditional influenza vaccine technologies could be used for this, which has the advantageof being familiar and likely more broadly accepted by the population.

The problemis: Vaccines that work well but aren’t used don’t help us. The response to a pandemic is therefore only partially technology-dependent— it’s also very much about how society reacts and how prepared it is.

Today, many people are increasingly negative toward vaccines. And that’s where communication comes in. I believe what often happens in science is that people come across as very pompous with their technical jargon. But it’s crucial not to take a top-down approach. I just don’t think of myself as being smarter than someone who is a mechanic or a master carpenter."

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