Galveston National Laboratory
Center for Biodefense & Emerging Infectious Diseases
Sealy Center for Vaccine Development
Center for Tropical Diseases
McLaughlin Endowment for Infection and Immunity |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Leading federal public health official Dr. James LeDuc to join UTMB's Institute for Human Infections and Immunity
Leading federal public health official Dr. James LeDuc to join UTMB’s Institute for Human Infections and Immunity
One of the nation’s leading infectious disease scientists, Dr. James W. LeDuc, will leave the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this fall to accept a top position with the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity (IHII) at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston, IHII director Stanley M. Lemon announced.
Effective Nov. 1, LeDuc will become the director of a new Program on Global Health within the IHII at UTMB and associate director for program development within the Galveston National Laboratory, a seven- story biocontainment facility now under construction on the UTMB campus and scheduled to begin operations in 2008. In addition, Dr. Lemon continued, LeDuc will become a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the inaugural holder of a new endowed chair with a focus on global health to be established in the name of the late UTMB professor Dr. Robert E. Shope. Shope was an internationally renowned specialist in virus diseases who, starting in the late 1990s, led a group of 26 UTMB scientists in one of the nation’s earliest and largest academic collaborations to develop effective countermeasures against infectious agents that authorities believe might be misused by bioterrorists.
“We are very pleased and excited that Dr. LeDuc will be joining our faculty this fall,” Lemon said. “As an internationally respected authority on emerging infections, he will bring a dynamic new focus on global health to UTMB’s Institute for Human Infections and Immunity, and add unique and invaluable expertise to the Galveston National Laboratory. He has led an outstanding program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and we expect his close connections with the CDC to add considerably to our ability to collaborate seamlessly with federal agencies in protecting the nation from potentially serious emerging infectious diseases in the future.”
About his new roles at UTMB, LeDuc said, “Any one of these would be a tremendous job and wonderful opportunity, and collectively it is an offer I simply could not refuse.” He said he anticipates that he will remain professionally close to his former colleagues at the CDC “as the new UTMB containment lab comes on line, and I look forward to working with them to make this lab a critical part of our national defense against bioterrorism.”
Since late 2005, LeDuc has coordinated the CDC’s efforts to prepare for the possibility of pandemic influenza. For the previous six years, LeDuc served as the director of CDC’s Division of Viral and Rickettsial Diseases, where he coordinated research activities, prevention initiatives and outbreak investigations for pathogens that cause viral hemorrhagic fevers, influenza and other respiratory infections, and childhood viral diseases, and newly emerging diseases such as SARS. He served as the associate director for global health from 1996 to 2000 in the Office of the Director, National Center for Infectious Diseases, and was a medical officer in charge of arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1992 to 1996. He also held leadership positions during a 23-year career as a U.S. Army officer in the Medical Research and Materiel Command, with assignments in Brazil, Panama and various locations in the United States, including the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
In discussing his planned departure from the CDC, LeDuc noted that he has the “utmost respect” for the CDC’s director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, “and for her leadership and vision.” He added, “It has been my privilege to work at CDC and to be associated with some of the most important health issues facing the nation and the world. The excellence in public health science that exists at CDC is unmatched anywhere, and the agency is a national and global resource. Ensuring that this excellence is sustained into the future is the challenge facing CDC leadership, and the agency is fortunate to have a wonderfully talented cadre of scientists and administrators poised to assume the helm.”