Staff Bio
Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, is the Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD).
Role at CDC
As director of NCIRD, Dr. Daskalakis leads CDC’s efforts to detect, prevent, and respond to vaccine-preventable and respiratory infectious disease threats.
Previous experience
Most recently, he served as the Director of the Division of HIV Prevention in CDC's National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. Dr. Daskalakis has been recognized nationally and internationally as an expert in HIV prevention and has focused much of his career on the treatment and prevention of HIV and other STIs as an activist physician with a focus on LGBTQIA+ communities. He also served as the Deputy Coordinator of the White House's Mpox Response, where he successfully led vaccination and public education efforts that helped to halt the advancement of the virus.
Dr. Daskalakis began his career as an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York City (NYC), New York, where he spearheaded several public health programs focused on community HIV testing and prevention. He has since served in several healthcare and public health capacities in NYC, including the Deputy Commissioner for the Division of Disease Control at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr. Daskalakis also directed the public health laboratory and all infectious disease control programs for NYC, including HIV, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections, vaccine-preventable diseases, and general communicable diseases. In addition to his leadership in infectious disease control efforts, he served as the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene incident commander during the measles outbreak of 2018-2019, as well as the 2020 COVID-19 public health emergency.
Education
Dr. Daskalakis received his Doctor of Medicine from the New York University School of Medicine and completed his residency training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He also completed clinical infectious disease fellowships at the Brigham and Women’s Massachusetts General Hospital combined program and received a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.