Faculty

Marc Lipsitch, DPhil
Director of Science
Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Director and Professor of Epidemiology
Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Department of Epidemiology
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Boston, MA

About the presenter

Marc Lipsitch, DPhil, director of science, Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics Center for Disease Control and Prevention, director and professor of epidemiology, Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, department of epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Mass. He is an internationally recognized expert in methods and disease-transmission modeling and has been a leading scientific authority during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Lipsitch is an author of more than 350 peer-reviewed publications on antimicrobial resistance, epidemiologic methods, mathematical modeling of infectious disease transmission, bacterial and human population genetics, immunity to streptococcus pneumoniae, and COVID-19 epidemiology. His research informs the use of transmission-dynamic simulations to improve the design of randomized and observational studies of infectious disease interventions, and bioethics related to infectious diseases and clinical trials in emergencies. His recent COVID-19 research builds on 20 years of groundbreaking work on SARS, pandemic influenza, and other emerging infections, as well as on the seasonality of influenza and coronavirus disease, which has contributed to the foundation for modern pandemic response. This includes real-time estimation of SARS transmissibility and modeling of control measures and calculating the reproductive number for the 1918 “Spanish flu” and severity of the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, which has informed non-pharmaceutical interventions such as physical distancing. During the present pandemic, Dr. Lipsitch has been featured in thousands of press articles and media interviews from CNN and BBC, to the Guardian and Wall Street Journal, and writes in and is interviewed regularly for outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post on COVID-19. Additionally, Dr. Lipsitch was a co-founder of the Cambridge Working Group in 2014, whose efforts helped to initiate a pause in U.S. government funding for research involving the creation of potential pandemic pathogens, such as transmission-enhanced avian influenza strains. He has written extensively on aspects of science policy in relation to such studies. Dr. Lipsitch has received awards for research, publications, mentoring and journal reviewing. He was elected to the National Academies of Medicine in 2020, for his pre-COVID-19 scientific accomplishments. In 2015, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and in 2014, he received the Robert Austrian Award for contributions to pneumococcal research. He is or was on the editorial advisory boards/associate editor of eLife, PLoS Medicine, Journal of Infectious Diseases, American Journal of Epidemiology, Epidemiology, and Epidemics. He currently serves on the Massachusetts Governor’s Medical Advisory Committee, and both the Massachusetts and World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 Vaccine Working Groups. He has also served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Working Group on H1N1 Influenza, as well as Centers for Disease Control's (CDC’s) Team B for the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and several advisory groups during the 2014–5 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He has provided advice to the Food and Drug Administration, CDC, WHO, International Monetary Fund, Congressional Budget Office, Defense Science Board, several pharmaceutical companies and the governments of Canada, Mexico, India, Germany, Austria, and Luxembourg. Dr. Lipsitch joined the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in 1999, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University with Dr. Bruce Levin and received a visiting scientist appointment at the CDC. He received a D.Phil. in zoology as a Rhodes Scholar from the University of Oxford, where he studied with Drs. Robert May and Martin Nowak, and a BA in philosophy from Yale University. In August 2021, Dr. Lipsitch was named director for science at the new Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics at the U.S. CDC, where he is on part-time loan from HSPH.

Planning Committee

Elizabeth Albert, MD
Clinical Activity Manager
Optum Health Education
Eden Prairie, MN

Rebecca Gleason, RN, CCM
Activity Manager
Optum Health Education
Eden Prairie, MN

Jennifer Malin, MD, PhD
Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer
Optum Health Solutions
Eden Prairie, MN

Tina Rydland, PharmD
President
ArdentCare Solutions
Denver, CO

Disclosures of relevant financial relationships

In accordance with the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education's (ACCME) Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education, OptumHealth Education (OHE) requires all those in control of educational content to disclose their financial relationships with ineligible companies within the prior 24 months. Ineligible companies are defined by the ACCME as companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing health care products used by or on patients. Individuals must disclose all financial relationships, regardless of the amount, with ineligible companies and regardless of their view of the relevance of the relationship to the education. OHE ensures that the content is independent of commercial bias.

Dr. Marc Lipsitch has indicated that he is on the advisory board for Janssen and Merck; receives grant/research funding from Pfizer; and has ownership interests in Sanofi Pasteur and Bristol Myers Squibb.

The activity planners have no financial relationships to disclose.