Biography
Dr. Jon Epstein is a veterinarian, epidemiologist and an internationally recognized leader in global health science and policy. His research focuses on the ecology and spillover of zoonotic viruses from wildlife into domestic animals and people, particularly those viruses associated with bats, such as Nipah virus, filoviruses, and zoonotic coronaviruses. Dr. Epstein frequently works with government health and wildlife agencies in the US and abroad, as well as intergovernmental institutions such as WHO, WOAH, FAO, Africa CDC and IUCN to help develop or strengthen zoonotic disease surveillance systems. Dr. Epstein has extensive experience developing and implementing academic and professional One Health training programs and mentors graduate students through academic appointments at Tufts University, Harvard University and Columbia University. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Advisors of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and is also a member of the program committee for the Master's in Conservation Medicine degree program.
His research has been published in leading scientific journals such as Science, Nature, PNAS, and Cell and has been featured on 60 Minutes, CNN, the PBS documentary Spillover, The New York Times and other news media. He was the Chief Scientific Advisor for the exhibit Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World, which opened at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History in 2017. (For more information about Dr. Epstein, visit One Health Science).