Donald S. Burke, MD, dean emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, is one of the world’s foremost experts in prevention, diagnosis and control of infectious diseases of global concern, including HIV/AIDS, hepatitis A, avian influenza and emerging infectious diseases.
In addition to serving as dean of Pitt Public Health, Dr. Burke is associate vice chancellor for global health, health sciences. He also is the first UPMC-Jonas Salk Professor of Global Health.
Before joining the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Burke was a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he served as associate chair of the department of international health and director of the Center for Immunization Research. He also was principal investigator of National Institutes of Health-supported research projects on HIV vaccines, biodefense and emerging infectious diseases.
Prior to his tenure at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Burke served 23 years on active duty in the U.S. Army, leading military infectious disease research at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C., and at the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Bangkok, Thailand. He retired at the rank of colonel.
Dr. Burke’s career-long mission has been prevention and mitigation of the impact of epidemic infectious diseases of global importance. His research activities have spanned a wide range of science “from the bench to the bush,” including development of new diagnostics, population-based field studies, clinical vaccine trials, computational modeling of epidemic control strategies and policy analysis. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 research reports
