World renowned Atlanta pandemic expert being kept from systems she created amid coronavirus crisis

ATLANTA — One of the world’s leading experts in pandemic response lives right here in Atlanta and has been barred from accessing the technology she created to help governments respond to pandemics.

Researcher Dr. Eva Lee is well-known to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and the Department of Defense.

For nearly 15 years, she’s worked to develop infectious disease response models to aid governments in providing testing, treatment, hospital capacity and other critical infrastructure. Those designs are her creations within a federal-funded system housed at Georgia Tech, called RealOpt. It’s benefited radiological disaster response in Japan, earthquake aftermath in Haiti and H1N1 response.

It’s a system Lee can no longer access. Even though the scientist spends her days at her home in Atlanta, calculating response models for COVID-19, consulting with local governments and the Trump administration’s top-level homeland security teams and academic experts, she is facing an uncertain future.

Lee is on administrative leave facing trouble in the federal courts, and despite Homeland Security requests, Georgia Tech won't let her access the technology she developed, citing that pending case and her admin leave status.

“My training and my work is precisely for this moment. So, it is not whether they should let me work. Actually, it would happen that it should to be that they would say that, ‘I must work.’ Don’t you agree?” Lee asked Channel 2 investigative reporter Nicole Carr.

A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE

Clips of Lee talking about response models over the past 15 years or so are widespread, and ultimately give a window into 2020.

“For pandemic flu, you all know that you and I are not going to get the vaccination, because we are all healthy and not in the group that have the priorities and those of course have priorities in terms of who will be getting those vaccine,” Lee said as she gave a presentation in California in 2007.

“When there’s a flu pandemic, your best way to protect yourself is to stay at home. The study already has shown in Asia they have done the exercise because we won’t get vaccination anyways. Your best way is to protect yourself from anybody, so you don’t get infected,” Lee said then.

If Lee’s name sounds familiar, it’s because she is at the center of a bombshell New York Times report revealing Lee as a key expert in the Red Dawn emails -- a chain of warnings beginning in January between top U.S. officials, medical experts and researchers closely monitoring the coronavirus spread overseas and here in the U.S.

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As the chain grew, so did the players: Dr. Anthony Fauci, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, Dr. Duane Caneva, the Department of Homeland Security’s chief medical officer.

And then there’s Lee, who was looped into the chain at the beginning of the year.

In the emails, the senior medical advisor for the Department of Veterans Affairs bet that “Dr. Eva Lee can help unravel,” the data and pending effects on the U.S.

She did just that, predicting outcomes on the Diamond Princess Cruise ship on Feb. 10, telling part of the group that “social distancing must begin now.”

Her projections on asymptomatic spread prompted a Department of Health and Human Services official to write on Feb. 23, “Eva this true?! If so, we have a huge whole (sic) on our screening and quarantine effort.”

THE FEDERAL CASE

At the same time, Lee was facing serious trouble here in Atlanta.

Late last year, she pleaded guilty to two charges that she falsified certificate paperwork for a $40,000 National Science Foundation grant and lied to a federal agent who investigated the claim.

She did not pocket any money. It was for research purposes, and NSF had completed its own administrative investigation earlier in the year.

The case was charged by B.J. Pak, US Attorney for the U.S. District Court for Northern District of Georgia.

Ahead of her May sentencing that may result in home confinement, dozens of support letters came from esteemed scientists and government officials. While Lee’s counsel noted she was limited in what she could say about the case, Lee spoke about her current COVID-19 response work.

“I found I’m unable to fulfill a lot of the requests that people want,” Lee said, referring to her barred access to thousands of programs and hundreds of computers at Tech.

“It’s hard to compare myself as one to looking at people that are dying, right? It’s not possible.”

“It makes you emotional?” Carr asked Lee.

“Yes. And I’m always emotional. Like, I feel very happy that I can save others and, I don’t know, this does not feel good,” Lee said, beginning to cry.

REQUESTS TO GEORGIA TECH

In a letter dated Jan. 31, the head of a Homeland Security bioterrorism division requested Georgia Tech's president to grant Lee access to her modeling and optimization technology.

“Dr. Lee’s skill set in emergency response and biodefense is critical to support our overall national health security, wrote Dr. Romelito Lapitan in part of that letter. “I urge you to provide her with full support in accessing her research facilities and programs ... I sincerely hope you will consider this request quickly so we can utilize Dr. Lee’s talents to serve this nation’s health crisis in a timely matter.”

A second, similar request would come on March 23rd from Dr. Duane Caneva, DHS’s chief medical officer.

On Thursday, Tech noted thousands of researchers involved in $800 million worth of federal research, including COVID-19 response.

“Although Georgia Tech has received letters of support from esteemed federal government employees that highlight her expertise and the insight she has been providing to an ad hoc consortium of researchers via e-mail, these letters fall short of specifically requesting or calling for Dr. Lee’s participation in an official government effort,” the university said in part of statement, noting they’d review any such request.

Lee said she doesn’t know how much more official the requests must be to regain her system access. She wondered aloud whether Tech expected a letter from President Trump, himself.

“As Nicole asked at the beginning, why isn’t Georgia Tech allowing me to use the system?” asked Lee in an interview this week. “ Is it really the pandemic means more than what Georgia Tech cares about? Or is saving lives really something that they don’t care or is it that they feel like, ‘Well, it’s just one of Eva Lee. It does not matter if we don’t have her. You know, people still die, and we can still save them,’”.

“But I think in some sense that is a very wrong concept because if you think hard about it, we are all just one little dot -- every one of us,” Lee continued. “It is together that it works. And I think that is what it all really means.”

So, is Lee the only person to have access to the systems at Georgia Tech? The short answer is yes.

While the school says it's not keeping the material from the public, a lot of the information is encrypted and Lee is the only researcher able to grant access to much of the content.

DHS would not comment on whether it had made any more requests to Tech, or what an official government response request would look like for Lee to access that technology.

They cited pending litigation.

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