Tanja Popovic, M.D., Ph.D.: In the Anthrax Lab
Chief, Epidemiologic Investigations Laboratory
CDC, National Center for Infectious Diseases
Division of Bacterial & Mycotic Disease, Meningitis and Special Pathogens Branch
The fall of 2001 was a blur for Dr. Tanja Popovic, 46, as she and her staff focused on testing and identifying anthrax specimens in her Epidemiologic Investigations Laboratory. As CDC’s leading anthrax laboratory expert, Popovic headed up a lab team of 43 people, including six staff members who were assigned to her from the U.S. Department of Defense.
At the height of the anthrax investigation, Popovic’s lab ran three shifts around the clock. She could frequently be found working in the lab for 24 hours straight, and her desk lamp remained on for weeks at a time.
“In the first few weeks, a few of us were never anywhere outside the laboratory building for more than a few hours,” she recalls. “The very first Sunday, my colleague, Rob Weyant, and I were both in our ‘space suits’ as we looked at several hundred plates for a typical colony of Bacillus anthracis. We opened one plate and Rob screamed, ‘That’s our boy!’ When we found it on a keyboard from the office of the first patient, it became clear that this was not a naturally occurring case, but was likely to turn into a criminal investigation.”
Under Popovic’s leadership, the lab tested close to 2,400 specimens from patients and the environment for the presence of anthrax spores and provided final confirmation for most B. anthracis isolates identified during the crisis. Working under constant governmental and public scrutiny, she and her team provided lab results to senior CDC leaders with incredible precision and speed.
The phones never stopped ringing, and Popovic rarely had a moment to herself even when she left the lab. “My goal was to have two hours of uninterrupted sleep,” she remembers. “My husband basically lived alone for three months. He built an elaborate set of speakers for our video and audio system that he still calls our ‘anthrax speakers.’ My kids are in college at Georgia Tech; at one point, my 22-year-old son called me and asked, ‘Are you alive?’”
Despite her personal sacrifices, Popovic can’t imagine working anywhere else. “I have done investigations of outbreaks. I’ve worked in Africa and Russia, and so many parts of the United States and the world,” she says. “But nothing compares to the importance of this. The pressure was enormous, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here.”