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Stephen Morse

Stephen S. Morse, Ph.D., is Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Before coming to Columbia in 1995, Dr. Morse was an Assistant Professor (virology) in The Rockefeller University, and Program Manager for Biodefense at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).  His research interests focus on infectious disease surveillance, and the epidemiology and assessment of emerging infectious diseases, including influenza.  He was Chair of the NIH “Conference on Emerging Viruses” (1989), for which he originated the concept of emerging viruses/infections, was founding chair of ProMED (the Program to Monitor Emerging Diseases, best known for originating outbreak reporting on the Internet in 1994); and served on the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health (1990-1992), and chaired its Virology Task Force.  His book Emerging Viruses (Oxford University Press, 1993) was selected by American Scientist as one of “The Top 100 Science Books of the [20th] Century”.  He was a founding section editor of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, and global co-Director of PREDICT (a USAID project to strengthen global capacity for surveillance and detection of new infectious disease threats) from 2009 to 2014.  He is currently an Associate Editor of Disaster Medicine & Public Health Preparedness, serves on the Editorial Board of several journals, including Health Security and Viral Immunology, and is a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).  In addition to membership in SER, he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American College of Epidemiology, and the American Academy of Microbiology.