Bring outbreak science to life Experience an outbreak before the crisis

Operation Outbreak combines interactive simulations, learning resources, and educational experiences to help students understand how infectious diseases spread and how individual choices shape collective outcomes.

Operation Outbreak creates live simulations, tabletop exercises, and custom learning experiences that help organizations examine infectious disease spread, decision-making, and coordination under pressure.

Public health and biosecurity professionals reading through injects during an exercise

Outbreak science: an interdisciplinary field

Outbreaks do not fit neatly into a single school subject. Understanding them requires students to connect biology and genetics with mathematics, history, civics, communication, ethics, public policy, and human behavior.

Outbreak simulations prepare students to lead during future outbreaks while contextualizing complex ideas — from the microscopic biology of pathogens, to the societal forces that shape how institutions, communities, and individuals interact during a response.

Connect classroom topics

Link science with mathematics, history, civics, communication, policy, ethics, social science, and more.

Make complex science tangible

Use realistic scenarios and interactive experiences to make concepts such as pathogen biology, genomics, transmission, and epidemiology easier to visualize and understand.

Explore roles and careers

Introduce students to the many people involved in outbreak response — from researchers and clinicians to public health officials, communicators, policymakers, and emergency response managers.

Start with a simulation, then keep going

A simulation can open the door to much more. Students experience an outbreak, investigate the science behind it, apply what they learn to new challenges, and take part in programs that connect outbreak science to their school and community.

Operation Outbreak supports that progression through live simulations, educational materials, student competitions, and interactive conferences and events.

Built for students learning in and beyond the classroom

Operation Outbreak is designed primarily for high school and postsecondary students, with experiences that can be adapted to different subjects, programs, and levels of prior knowledge.

High-school classrooms and programs

Bring outbreak science into biology, public health, civics, history, mathematics, or other interdisciplinary courses and programs.

Colleges and universities

Use simulations and learning experiences in undergraduate and graduate courses, campus programs, and interdisciplinary health-security education.

Model UN, public-health, and student organizations

Give student groups a hands-on way to explore outbreak response, policy, communication, diplomacy, biosecurity, and coordination across different roles.

STEM and career-exploration programs

Introduce students to the range of disciplines and careers involved in outbreaks — from genomics and epidemiology to policy, communication, emergency management, and national security.

From classroom learning to professional preparedness

Operation Outbreak began as a way for students to experience how an epidemic unfolds. Today, the same approach helps scientists, public health professionals, and biosecurity practitioners rehearse decisions they may face during a real biological threat event.

Operation Outbreak supports the recurring Training Course in Pathogen Detection and Biosecurity, co-hosted by the United Nations Biological Weapons Convention Implementation Support Unit and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. Recent deployments have included professional biosecurity training in Trieste, Italy, and Cape Town, South Africa, and an interactive exercise at the 2026 Global Health Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Dr. Susan Cropp, formerly a biosecurity program lead with the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, now advises Operation Outbreak as it expands its professional biosecurity program.

See the latest from Operation Outbreak →

Professionals working an outbreak scenario together during training

Turn plans into practice

Pressure-test response plans

See how strategies perform against a live, evolving transmission model rather than a static scenario.

Exercise coordination under pressure

Practice interagency communication and decision-making as information and conditions evolve, and timing is crucial.

Surface operational gaps

Identify gaps in surveillance, risk communication, information sharing, and chains of command.

Explore complex biological threat scenarios

Practice responses involving novel pathogens, deliberate release, attribution challenges, dual-use concerns, and contested information environments.

Bring participation into events

Use simulations, demonstrations, presentations, and facilitated experiences to make conferences, meetings, and public-facing events more interactive.

Built for the people who plan and lead health security responses

Public health and emergency-preparedness teams

Exercise surge response, surveillance, risk communication, intervention choices, and coordination across agencies.

Biosecurity and national-security professionals

Work through deliberate-release, dual-use, attribution, and other biological-security scenarios.

Law enforcement and investigators

Practice coordination with public-health partners, attribution challenges, evidence considerations, and information sharing.

Researchers

Study transmission dynamics, human behavior, interventions, and decision-making under outbreak conditions.

Choose where to start

Simulations

Run an app-based outbreak simulation in which a pathogen spreads through students’ real-world interactions. Students make decisions as the outbreak unfolds, then examine the results of their decisions.

Learn more about simulations →

Mission Biosecurity

Students apply their knowledge of outbreak preparedness to creative “operations” inspired by real-world health security challenges, and compete for prizes in the process.

Learn more about the competition →

A student team presenting as biomedical researchers

Student organizations

Students can bring outbreak science education, research, and action into their schools and communities through an Operation Outbreak Club or a university Embassy.

Learn more about student leadership →

Two phones running the simulation, one showing a healthy status and one infected

Simulations

Create a simulated outbreak shaped by participants’ real movements and interactions. Afterward, review the epidemic curve, contact network, transmission patterns, and effects of interventions generated by the group.

Learn more about simulations →

A tabletop exercise, technical and policy cells

Tabletop exercises

Combine a live simulated outbreak with structured technical and policy decision-making. Participants respond to emerging information, coordinate across roles, and make decisions that influence both the scenario and how the simulated outbreak develops.

Learn more about tabletop exercises →

Operation Outbreak at a student conference

Conferences and events

Work with Operation Outbreak to design an interactive conference experience, training, demonstration, or workshop tailored to your audience, objectives, and setting.

Learn more about conferences and events →

Not seeing the right fit?

Tell us what you have in mind, and we’ll help you design the activity that meets your needs.