Doctor of Science
Dr. Inger Damon is director of the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology (DHCPP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In July 2014, she was named CDC incident manager for the Ebola response in West Africa and established an operation to manage the largest international emergency response in CDC history. Prior to this role, Dr. Damon, one of the world’s foremost experts on orthopoxviruses, including monkeypox and smallpox, led the DHCPP’s Poxvirus and Rabies Branch after spending nearly 15 years with the poxvirus team.
Her study of orthopoxviruses, and her significant public health experience, prepared her well for the fight against West Africa’s Ebola epidemic. “The same tools we’re using to fight Ebola—focusing on community involvement, education, case identification (including diagnostics, contact tracing and isolation)—were used to wipe out smallpox and are still used for monkeypox control,”she once explained.“Our primary goal is to bring an end to the suffering of so many as well as develop the public health infrastructure there to help prevent future outbreaks.”
After graduating from Amherst with a degree in chemistry, Dr. Damon became the first Amherst woman to earn an M.D. and Ph.D., which she received from the University of Connecticut, where she studied biomedical sciences. She later completed a residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, a clinical fellowship in infectious diseases and a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular virology at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
Today, in addition to her work at the CDC, Dr. Damon is also a clinical assistant professor at Emory University and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Smallpox and Other Poxvirus Infections. She is the author of multiple book chapters and has authored or co-authored more than 160 publications, mostly related to poxviruses and poxvirus-associated disease.