Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Former Director, CDC

    Dr. Rochelle Walensky served as the 19th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021-23), Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (2012-2021), and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital (2017-2021). Dr. Walensky is an infectious disease clinician whose research and over 350 publications has focused on infectious diseases and HIV/AIDS policy, including cost-effective strategies for HIV screening, treatment, and prevention, both in the U.S. and around the globe. Dr. Walensky served on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic inMassachusetts until beginning her tenure at the CDC on January 20th, 2021. While at the CDC, Dr.Walensky led the nation - and the world - through unprecedented times, navigating the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic and further facing the largest density of diverse infectious threats likely ever seen in this country.

    Dr. Walensky is a member of the American Academy of Physicians, National Academy of Medicine and the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on the Board of Trustees at the Doris Duke Foundation and
The Carter Center and is currently the Bayer Fellow in Health and Biotech at the American Academy in Berlin.

    Dr. Walensky received her BA (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 1991) from Washington University in St. Louis; her MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (1995) and her MPH from the Harvard
School of Public Health (Clinical Effectiveness, 2001). She completed her Internal Medicine residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1995-1998) and her Infectious Disease fellowship at the Massachusetts
General/Brigham and Women’s Hospital combined program (1998-2001). She is married to Loren Walensky, MD, PhD, a physician-scientist and pediatric oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute/Boston Children’s Hospital. The Doctors Walensky have 3 sons ages 20, 23, and 25.

Dr. Marrazzo is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, where she oversees a $6.3 billion budget that supports research to advance the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases. Prior to taking that position in 2023, she was the C. Glenn Cobbs Endowed Chair and Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine (UAB). She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and was Treasurer of the IDSA from 2021-2023, having served on the board since 2018. She was Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine Council from 2015-2018.

Dr. Marrazzo has a broad research portfolio that includes the relationships between the vaginal microbiome and female reproductive tract infections, HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, hormonal contraception, and risk of STI/HIV acquisition. She led UAB’s participation in the RECOVER trial, funded by NIH to study post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and a large clinical trial of the meningococcal Group B vaccine rMenB+OMV NZ (Bexsero) to prevent gonococcal infection. She chaired the Biomedical Science Committee of the HIV Prevention Trial Network, the group tasked with integrating the biomedical science agenda across numerous clinical trials of antiretroviral prevention agents. She was also a Co-PI of the NIH-funded Infectious Disease Clinical Research Consortium that leads the Vaccine Treatment and Evaluation Units as well as NIH-funded STI clinical trials. She has been a leading voice in educating colleagues, the community, and the media during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2022- Dr. Jesse Bloom studies evolution using viruses and viral proteins as models. Specifically focusing on the fast-evolving influenza virus, Bloom aims to understand how mutations in viral genes shape the pathogen’s ability to infect and spread. He uses computational biology and real-world data to build evolutionary models and examine different scales of viral evolution, from evolution within a single host to evolution on a global scale. In doing so, Bloom addresses both fundamental and translational questions, including those with relevance to developing more effective seasonal flu vaccines.

2021 - Dr. Pardis Sabeti is a Professor at the Center for Systems Biology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and the Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and a Howard Hughes Investigator.

2019 - Anne Schuchat, MD

2017 - David L. Heymann is Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Head of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, London and Chairman of the Board, Public Health England, UK. Previously he was the World Health Organization's Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment, and Representative of the Director-General for polio eradication. 

2016 — Dr. Peter Piot is a known microbiologist for his research into Ebola and AIDs

2015 — Dr. Julie Overbaugh worked closely with investigators in Kenya for the past 2 decades, including on a number of studies of mother-to-child and heterosexual transmission of HIV-1.

2014 — Dr. Bruce Walker leads an international research effort to understand how some rare people who are infected with HIV but have never been treated can fight the virus with their immune system.

2013 — Dr. Thomas Quinn investigations have involved the study of the epidemiologic, virologic, immunologic features of HIV infection in Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia. 

2012 — Dr. Anthony "Tony" Fauci is an immunologist who has made substantial contributions to HIV/AIDS research and other immunodeficiencies, both as a scientist and as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

2009 — Dr. Mark Wainberg was the first to identify 3TC as an anti-viral drug effective against HIV in 1989, and has made multiple contributions to the field of HIV drug resistance.

2008 — Dr. Douglas Richman has made major clinical and laboratory contributions to the field of HIV/AIDS, which represent a model of translational medical research. 

2007 — Dr. Lawrence Corey pioneered the development of antiviral therapy for human chronic viral infections.

2006 — Dr. John Wennberg is a researcher of healthcare variations.

2002 — Harriet Robinson has a multi-protein clade B DNA/MVA vaccine in phase 2a clinical trials through the US HIV vaccine Trials Network (HVTN).

2000 — Dr. Michael Oldstone has made significant advancements that have led to the understanding of viral persistence and immunity in the nervous system.

1999 — Dr. Maurice Hilleman is known as one of the world's leading vaccinologists, having developed eight of the 14 vaccines routinely given for once-common childhood diseases.

1998 — Dr. Robert Gallo is best known for his role in the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the infectious agent responsible for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and in the development of the HIV blood test.

1997 — Dr. Baruch Blumberg was an American physician, geneticist, and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the hepatitis B virus while an investigator at the NIH.

1994 — Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first successful polio vaccine.