As Joe Biden awakens on his first full day as president of the United States — the first University of Delaware alumnus to do so in our nation’s nearly 245-year history — a printout of his to-do list could probably circle the Earth several times over.

With decades of experience as a United States senator and eight years in the White House as vice president to former President Barack Obama, Biden starts this new mission with the insight and experience to know what he’s up against.

Drawing on counsel from expert advisers, he and Vice President Kamala Harris have identified four top priorities, outlined plans for each and relayed the sense of urgency that each of these initiatives demands.

For starters, Biden last week addressed the nation with an ambitious $1.9 trillion COVID-relief plan — “a moral obligation,” he called it — that includes $20 billion for accelerated vaccination efforts, $1,400 in stimulus checks for millions of eligible adults and children, extended unemployment benefits and billions in assistance for small businesses and state and local governments.

UDaily asked several UD experts and doctoral students to reflect on the top four initiatives in the Biden administration’s Day One agenda. We offer some of their perspectives on these critical challenges in the following linked stories:

COVID-19. The coronavirus pandemic has had a disastrous impact on our planet, claiming the lives of more than 2 million people worldwide, more than 400,000 in the U.S. alone. Tricia Wachtendorf and James Kendra, co-directors of UD’s Disaster Research Center, explore critical needs for recovery and plans for future crises, and Kelvin Lee, director of the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), sketches out how U.S. leadership is critical to promoting the innovative manufacturing, supply lines and workforce needed to address this crisis and the crises yet to come.