About Us

Widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading infectious disease researchers, W. Ian Lipkin, MD, John Snow Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Mailman School of Public Health and professor of Neurology and Pathology at Columbia University, has been invited by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to give the prestigious 2009 Joseph J. Kinyoun Memorial Lecture. On October 8, 2009, Dr. Lipkin will address the NIAID with a talk on “Microbe Hunting in the 21st Century.”

An expert in diagnostics, pathogen surveillance and discovery, Dr. Lipkin has been at the forefront of infectious disease research for more than two decades. Over the course of his career he has discovered more than 30 novel viruses, assisted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Defense and WHO in outbreaks of respiratory disease, hemorrhagic fever, meningoencephalitis, and vaccine safety investigations, served as an intermediary between the WHO and the Chinese government during the SARS outbreak of 2003, and co-directed SARS research efforts in China with now Minister of Health Chen Zhu. He was the first to use purely genetic methods in pathogen discovery and has invented or adapted many of the tools used for this type of research including subtractive cloning, differential display, microarrays and high throughput pyrosequencing. Locally he is best known for identifying West Nile virus as the cause of an encephalitis outbreak in New York in 1999.

Dr. Lipkin directs the WHO Collaborating Centre on Diagnostics, Surveillance and Immunotherapeutics for Emerging Infectious and Zoonotic Diseases as well as the Northeast Biodefense Center, the largest of the eleven National Institutes of Health Regional Centers of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases. In the latter role, he oversees a consortium of more than 350 scientists and 28 academic and government institutions that conduct interdisciplinary, inter-institutional research on diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines to address the challenges of emerging infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance.

The annual Joseph J. Kinyoun Memorial Lecture honors Dr. Kinyoun, who in 1887 established the Laboratory of Hygiene on Staten Island, the predecessor of the National Institutes of Health. With an audience of senior researchers and medical professionals and streaming live around the world, the Kinyoun Lecture is an important vehicle for facilitating progress in medical research by promoting the exchange of ideas – a philosophy heartily shared by both the NIAID and the Mailman School of Public Health.