Maureen Miller, PhD

Maureen Miller, PhD, is an infectious disease epidemiologist and medical anthropologist targeting systems level change. She has focused primarily on the structural drivers of infectious disease transmission. Dr. Miller has worked with multiple stakeholders in partnership to evaluate global responses to public health challenges in order to share lessons learned, best practices, and information gaps with both senior leadership and frontline staff. She has designed analytic frameworks at scale in a number of substantive areas. The projects she has worked on have had direct impact on response programming and informed strategic actions at the global and regional level.

The integration of multiple scientific methodologies has been a hallmark of her career. Dr. Miller is the lead designer of a Pandemic-Threats Warning System to prevent pandemics in real time at their source. Proof of concept of the warning system's ability to monitor novel zoonotic disease spillover was established in a small study in Yunnan, China. While a full-time professor at Columbia University, she established a successful community-academic research partnership in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Published findings document strong social and structural components underlying transmission of a range of infectious diseases. In a decade long collaboration with pathologist Franklin Lowy, MD, she developed methods to integrate microbiology, epidemiology and social network analysis to understand the transmission dynamics of S. aureus.

Dr. Miller is broadly focused on health disparities, with subject matter expertise in social determinants of health, population health and health systems strengthening. Her clear presentation of the latest science has fueled media demand for her perspective on the pandemic coronavirus, as well as on the prevention of future pandemics. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, CNN, BBC and been interviewed by TIME, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous other news outlets with global reach. She is the author of more than 50 peer reviewed articles and opinion essays, and has held leadership roles on grants totaling more than $160 million.