As of January 1, Marc Lipsitch, DPhil, has joined Stanford, bringing with him decades of leadership in infectious disease epidemiology, mathematical modeling, and science communication. Renowned for his voice and expertise during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lipsitch has helped shape global understanding of disease dynamics, public health policy, and the risks - and responsibilities - of emerging science.
Previously a professor at Harvard and founding director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Lipsitch has advised the CDC, contributed to pandemic preparedness efforts, and written extensively for the public, including op-eds in The New York Times and Scientific American. At Stanford, he will split his time between the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine, the Department of Biology, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), where he continues his work on biosecurity.
We recently caught up with Dr. Lipsitch to discuss his work and his move to Stanford.
The Conversation
Q: What first drew you to the field of epidemiology?
I was trained in evolutionary biology and mathematical modeling, with a focus on infectious diseases. During graduate school and my postdoc, I primarily thought of myself as a biologist. But the most informative data for understanding pathogen evolution - and many of the most pressing questions - come from infectious disease epidemiology. Over the past two decades, that's where my work has increasingly focused.
Q: You've published guest essays for major outlets like The New York Times for decades. Do you think there's a growing role – or responsibility – for scientists to be visible voices on digital platforms?
I've enjoyed writing about science for broad audiences since graduate school. It helps me clarify, for myself, why the work we do matters. Explaining it to others forces that clarity.
When the pandemic began, there was an urgent need for scientific, clear, and nonpolitical communication about what we knew, what we didn't, and what that meant. I wrote several dozen op-eds, spoke frequently with journalists, and helped organize over 150 Zoom press conferences through our center at Harvard. This helped reduce the burden on individual researchers who were otherwise fielding nonstop media requests.
It was a relief when the pandemic eased and I faded a bit from the public eye - because, in a way, knowing your epidemiologist's name too well is like knowing your dentist too well: it usually means something has gone wrong. Unfortunately, today there's a renewed need for expert, unbiased voices as political interference threatens scientific integrity, including in federal advisory committees.
Q: What advice would you give to other doctors or researchers who want to share their perspectives more widely, whether it be through op-eds or social media?
Stay constructive. There's more than enough vitriol on social media and increasingly in the regular media too. You'll reach more people by being sharp on facts and arguments while steering clear of personal attacks or assumptions about others' motives. Nobody gets this right all the time, but it's something to strive for.
Second, stick to what you know. If you're speculating, make that clear. People want to hear what scientists think, but we have a responsibility to distinguish between what we know and what we believe. That was actually one of the first things I wrote about during the pandemic: How to Report on the COVID-19 Outbreak Responsibly.
Q: During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, your name became a regular presence in public discourse. What was that experience like, balancing science, communication, and public expectation?
It was both exhilarating and exhausting.
Exhilarating, because it gave me the chance to apply what we knew to help shape policy, inform public decision-making, and improve the science itself - at a time when clear answers were urgently needed.
Exhausting, because certainty was often out of reach, and people craved it - understandably - when confronting a new and unfamiliar threat. The pandemic also stretched on for a long time, and the political polarization added a constant layer of complexity and fatigue.
Q: Looking back, what do you think we got most right - and most wrong - in our national response to COVID-19?
The rapid development and production of highly effective vaccines was an extraordinary achievement. Certain local governments, Austin, Texas, for example, with help from a University of Texas group, successfully adjusted control measures to protect the health system without shutting down their cities.
On the downside, we lacked reliable data on even the most basic metrics - such as how many people were actually infected. Some policies, like school closures, stayed in effect long after their benefits had diminished. And tragically, many more lives were lost than necessary due to a slow national response and persistent vaccine hesitancy - some of which, I believe, was fueled by missteps in how our public health system communicated and responded.
In many ways, our public health infrastructure is still stuck in the 19th century. Though it improved somewhat during the pandemic, it's still too decentralized and poorly coordinated, particularly when it comes to data and response strategies.
I contributed to the book Lessons from the COVID War, written largely by Philip Zelikow, which I think is the best statement of what went right and wrong in the U.S., and why.
A bright spot was the founding of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) at CDC, which I helped to set up and direct for the first year. CFA has really brought world-class modeling and analytics to emergency response in this country. It's still doing great work. While it was not spared in the recent federal workforce cuts, it has had bipartisan support and really is enhancing our health security.
Q: What public health issues are keeping you up at night right now - ones that you feel aren't getting enough attention?
The dismantling of U.S. overseas aid through USAID and PEPFAR is the most destructive change in public health since I entered the field. Millions of people could die as a result of these cuts. These programs were among the best things the U.S. government ever did, and it is both immoral and tragic that the current administration has dismantled them. Infectious diseases, famine, and other scourges will kill our fellow human beings - and much of that suffering could be prevented at a very modest cost.
The continued circulation of H5N1 influenza in birds, cattle, and several other mammalian species - with very limited surveillance - is another example of the problems discussed in Lessons from the COVID War. While we've been fortunate so far that this virus has not acquired the ability to spread easily between humans, the risk is elevated due to its widespread transmission in animals - and that's deeply concerning.
Q: What current research projects are you most excited about or focused on right now?
I'm always working on a variety of projects related to how our interventions affect pathogen populations and the consequences of those changes for human health.
One particularly exciting and difficult problem we've been working on for a long time is how to use evolutionary models to predict how bacterial populations will change when we vaccinate against them. The challenge is that vaccines target only some strains, giving an advantage to those not included in the vaccine. It's been incredibly interesting - and full of surprises - to try to understand that process so we can guide it in a way that minimizes disease. I'm excited to join Stanford to be surrounded by so many great evolutionary biologists and ecologists to further expand how I think about that problem.
I'm also working to understand what did and didn't work in controlling COVID-19, especially the gap between the clear effects of behavior changes and the less certain impact of large policy decisions.
I'm also really excited that my work on biosecurity - figuring out how to regulate potentially dangerous biological experiments without stifling important discoveries - can now become a formal part of my job.
Q: Lastly, what continues to drive your passion for this work?
I love figuring out how things work (the basic science), how to measure how well they work (like how to figure out how much disease a vaccine can prevent), and working with others to make research safer and more productive (the biosecurity efforts).
These are all really different activities, but they feed off each other and keep my short attention span satisfied. I enjoy having lots of different things to think about each day. And most of all, I get to do this work alongside generous, brilliant, hardworking colleagues and students.