Drs Brett Finlay and Marco Marra sequence the novel SARS virus in record time

As an emerging pandemic began sweeping the globe, Drs Brett FinlayMarco Marra and their research teams worked around the clock to sequence the novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus in just six days. This impressive milestone paved the way for another enormous accomplishment – the development of three possible vaccines for SARS in under a year in collaboration with many other scientists as part of the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative (SAVI) program. The innovative scientific approaches used to solve the SARS crisis would go on to inform the processes of combatting future pandemics like COVID-19 in 2020.