Most influential: Meet Orange County’s 125 top influencers for 2021

Philip Felgner. Felgner is the director of UC Irvine’s Vaccine Research and Development Center and Protein Microarray Laboratory and Training Facility. His painstaking work over the past 35 years laid the groundwork for the mRNA vaccines that are so effective against COVID-19. … David Souleles. Souleles is the director of the COVID-19 Response Team at UC Irvine. He is also the director of the Masters in Public Health Program and Practice for the UCI Program in Public Health. Souleles’ team had been working son the on-site contact tracing program at UCI, operating under agreement with the OC Health Care Agency to provide the services for the university’s students, faculty and staff. Throughout the pandemic, Souleles became the university’s main point of contact for all things COVID.