Chris Beyrer, MD, MPH, an internationally recognized epidemiologist who has worked on the front lines of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 treatment and research, is the director of the Duke Global Health Institute.

Beyrer, who has worked on COVID-19 vaccine trials since 2020, currently serves as senior scientific liaison to the COVID-19 Vaccine Prevention Network. He is past president of the International AIDS Society, the world’s largest body of HIV professionals and has served as advisor to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the National Institutes of Health’s Office of AIDS Research, the U.S. Military HIV Research Program, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the Open Society Foundations, among numerous other organizations. The author of “War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia,” he has conducted collaborative research in Thailand for 30 years.

Before coming to Duke, Beyrer was the inaugural Desmond M. Tutu Professor of Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he also was a professor of epidemiology, international health, nursing and medicine. At Johns Hopkins, he directed the T32 Training Program in HIV Epidemiology and Prevention Science and served as associate director of the JHU Center for AIDS Research and the Center for Global Health. He was the founding director of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights.

Beyrer received his medical degree from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and holds a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2014 and serves on the Academy’s Board for Global Health, and on the Committee for Human Rights.