Staff Bio
Ermias Belay, MD, is the Principal Deputy Director for the Public Health Infrastructure Center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Role at CDC
In this role, Dr. Belay serves as the principal advisor to the center director and participates in senior leadership decisions affecting the center, including setting scientific and organizational priorities and strategies. Dr. Belay also oversees the functions of the center's offices for science, data reporting and evaluation, and informatics support.
Previous experience
Prior to joining the center, Dr. Belay served in various positions at CDC for over 25 years focusing on infectious diseases. In his many roles at CDC, he provided scientific leadership and oversight of research studies, outbreak investigations, and public health programs.
Most recently, Dr. Belay served as Associate Director for Epidemiology and Global Health in the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology (DHCPP), National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. In this role, he coordinated the global health activities of DHCPP including programs and projects in many countries focusing on Ebola and other emerging hemorrhagic fever viruses, orthopoxviruses, rabies, brucellosis, anthrax, and other zoonotic pathogens. He provided epidemiology oversight across DHCPP, which consists of diverse programs ranging from bacterial and viral zoonotic diseases, infectious disease pathology, prion diseases, chronic fatigue syndrome, and emergency preparedness for several Tier 1 pathogens.
Dr. Belay has extensive experience leading scientific investigations and public health programs that have resulted in great benefit to public health. As a nationally and internationally recognized expert in prion diseases, Kawasaki disease, and global health, he has made substantial contributions to public health through more than 140 publications in scientific journals with outstanding scientific impact.
Over the years, Dr. Belay has participated in many high-profile CDC emergency responses, including the current Mpox outbreak, COVID-19 pandemic response, Zika virus-associated Guillain-Barré syndrome in Colombia and Brazil, the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone where he served as the country lead, the 2010-2011 Haiti cholera response, and the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic.