Dr. Sohail Rao

NOTE VENUE: SOLOMON ORTIZ INTERNATIONAL CENTER
402 Harbor Dr., Corpus Christi, TX 78401

When the pandemic comes, and it will come, it is unlikely in a major American city. It is more likely to announce itself, quietly at first, in places like the Rio Grande Valley and the Coastal Bend, where the counties carry among the highest rates of diabetes, obesity, and uninsurance in the country, where mosquito-borne viruses cross daily with travelers and goods, and where the Port of Corpus Christi connects the Gulf to every continent it touches.

This presentation draws on the speaker’s illustrious experience leading clinical research operations in the Rio Grande Valley during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period in which a small academic enterprise was scaled into a network of more than 90 active investigational protocols at the height of the crisis. The Valley was, for a stretch of the summer of 2020, the most lethal county cluster per capita in the U.S. The lessons drawn from that experience, hospital overflow, vaccine hesitancy in mixed-status communities, multidrug-resistant infections, the limits of telemedicine in border colonias, and the structural fragility of frontline rural healthcare, represent, the speaker will argue, the truest preview now available of how the next pandemic will unfold on the ground.

Looking forward, the presentation surveys the diseases most likely to define the coming decade for South Texas: dengue, Zika, and Chagas now established in the region; Vibrio infections rising in Coastal Bend waters under a warming Gulf; the continued range expansion of Aedes aegypti; multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and antimicrobial resistance moving across the border in both directions; and the next coronavirus or influenza variant whose origin remains unknown. The argument is straightforward: the border is not a periphery of American infectious disease policy. It is the bellwether. What is done in South Texas, or left undone, will be felt nationally and globally within a decade.

Dr. Rao currently serves as President & CEO of INNOCAVORE Center for Research & Biotechnology, Designated Institutional Officer of Texas Institute for Graduate Medical Education, and President of HBond Foundation. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of INNOVAPATH, a Premier Journal Bridging Discovery & Innovation. Prior to establishing INNOVACORE, Dr. Rao was Executive Vice President at DHR Health System, President and Chief Executive Officer at DHR Health Institute for Research & Development, and Executive Director of the DHR Health Institute for Leadership Development. Dr. Rao is an experienced immunologist with an interest in transplantation and infectious diseases and holds the position of Professor at Texas A&M University and the University of Houston. He is an NIH-funded investigator and has over four (4) decades of experience in leading research at various Tier I academic and nonacademic institutions in the United States. He is a Fulbright Specialist with the US Department of State and provides strategic guidance to international academic institutions in research, undergraduate and graduate medical education, strategy development and execution, and leadership development. He serves as a US Department of State-appointed consultant to many universities in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

Dr. Rao obtained his MD from Dow Medical College; his MA in Physiology from Boston University School of Medicine; his Doctorate in Philosophy (DPhil) from Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK; and completed his fellowship at Harvard University. Prior to joining DHR Health, Dr. Rao served as the System Vice President for Research and Academics and Chief Academic Officer at CHRISTUS Health; System Vice President for Research at Ochsner Health System, New Orleans, Louisiana. He also served as Professor and Deputy Head of Schools Research at the Ochsner Clinical School, University of Queensland. Prior to joining Ochsner, Dr. Rao served as Professor of Surgery and Molecular Medicine at the University of South Florida Health (USF Health). He was also the Senior Associate Vice President at USF Health and served as the Chief Research Officer for this academic entity. After completing his doctoral education at Oxford, Dr. Rao joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1993, where he served as an Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, and the Director and Chief of the Section of Cellular Transplantation and the Section of Medical Informatics, Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

In 2000, he joined Drexel University, College of Medicine as the Senior Associate Dean for Research and Biomedical Graduate Studies and Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Microbiology and Immunology. He subsequently became the Vice Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at Drexel University College of Medicine and, in 2003, was promoted to Senior Associate Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Studies at Drexel University. In 2004, he joined Middle Tennessee State University, the largest comprehensive institution of higher education in the Tennessee Board of Regents System (the Nation’s sixth largest higher education system), where he served as Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the College of Graduate Studies.

Please reserve your tickets by Noon on Monday, June 22, 2026. Only a limited number of tickets are available to be purchased at the door with cash or check on the day of the event. For ticket and membership information, please visit our website: www.worldaffairstexas.com or contact Dr. Anantha Babbili, WACST President & CEO, at 361.563.5177 or on his email ID: ananthasbabbili@yahoo.com. Sponsors for this, and forthcoming events, are most welcome!

THE WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL OF SOUTH TEXAS STRIVES TO EDUCATE AND SERVE SOUTH TEXAS AND CORPUS CHRISTI COMMUNITIES ABOUT OUR ECONOMY, FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND THE AMERICAN ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND ECONOMICS. THE NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION PARTNERS WITH THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE PROGRAM AT THE W.B. RAY HIGH SCHOOL AND ALSO PROMOTES CITIZEN AWARENESS TO FOSTER GOODWILL AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE. COME JOIN US FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY CONVERSATION AT THE LUNCHEON!!

COME JOIN US FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY CONVERSATION AT THE LUNCHEON –-

COURTESY OF

THE WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL OF SOUTH TEXAS!

Ticket Purchase Countdown – Purchase tickets before time runs out!