W. Ian Lipkin, MD

W. Ian Lipkin, MD, the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology and professor of neurology and pathology at Columbia University, is internationally recognized for the development of molecular methods for microbial surveillance and discovery. He directs the Center for Infection and Immunity; the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Diagnostics, Surveillance, and Immunotherapeutics for Emerging Infectious and Zoonotic Diseases; and the Northeast Biodefense Center. He is co-chair of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, he completed his M.D. at Rush Medical College, medicine residency at the University of Washington, neurology residency at the University of California San Francisco, and fellowship in microbiology and neuroscience at The Scripps Research Institute.

His contributions include:

• The first use of purely molecular methods to identify an infectious agent.
• Implication of West Nile virus as the cause of the encephalitis epidemic in North America in 1999.
• Invention of MassTag PCR and the first panmicrobial microarray; first use of deep sequencing in pathogen discovery.
• The discovery and molecular characterization of more than 500 viruses.

His honors include the following:

• Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences
• Japanese Human Science Foundation visiting professor
• Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons Visiting Bruenn Professor
• American Society of Microbiology Foundation lecturer
• Ellison Medical Foundation senior scholar in global infectious disease
• Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Distinguished lecturer of the National Center for Infectious Diseases
• Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology
• John Courage Professor, National University of Singapore
• Kinyoun lecturer, National Institutes of Health
• Fellow of the Wildlife Conservation Society
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Member of the Association of American Physicians

 
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