San Diego Union Tribune. A path forward for gene drive technologies. pdf

​"UC Riverside’s Akbari put in a plug for more research dollars in Southern California to develop and test gene drive technologies.“Developing these systems takes a lot of effort and time and they are very complex,” Akbari said. “So funding the right groups would be important, and opening up larger collaborative efforts.
“In California we have a pretty good team of people working on this goal. We have Bruce Hay at Caltech, Tony James at UC Irvine, Ethan Bier, and me. We’re all really close to each other, about an hour’s drive of each lab. So I think having a collaborative grant where we could come together and work on these technologies would be really nice, and we don’t have that yet.”

Nova Next. Editing Out Pesticides. pdf

“We’re taking multiple approaches. The ideal approach would be to eradicate the pest—develop a catalytic gene drive system that you could release into a population that can spread invasively,” says Omar Akbari, a molecular biologist at UC Riverside. “And as it spreads, the population declines without the use of insecticides.”

UCR Today. Rio Olympics from A to Z. pdf

Professor Akbari said this about Zika and the Olympics:
“It is estimated that 1/2 million visitors will travel to Brazil for the 2016 Olympics, and it is important that these travelers exercise extreme caution as related to Zika. In Brazil, Zika still poses a significant threat with a total of 166,000 suspected cases, and counting, thus far. As recommended by the CDC, pregnant women should avoid the games completely, and individuals with pregnant partners should abstain from sexual contact for the duration of the pregnancy, and upon returning home from the games. In addition, all visitors should take the necessary steps to prevent mosquito bites, both during the games and for several weeks after returning home.”