David L. Swerdlow MD recently retired from Pfizer Vaccines. During his six-year tenure at Pfizer he was Global COVID Vaccine Medical Lead and Clinical Epidemiology & Business Development Lead. Prior to Pfizer Vaccines, he worked at CDC for 25 years. From 2009–15 he was the Associate Director for Science, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). He led the CDC MERS Coronavirus Responses in 2013 and 2014 and held leadership roles during numerous other CDC emergency responses including cholera in Haiti (CDC lead), pandemic Influenza A (H1N1), Ebola in West Africa, Hurricane Katrina, adverse events associated with smallpox vaccine, and the anthrax bioterrorism attacks. He spent more than a decade studying foodborne diseases and several years studying respiratory diseases, rickettsial diseases and HIV/AIDS. He attended UCSD, is a graduate of Harvard Medical School, completed internal medicine residency at the University of Washington, post-doctoral training in epidemiology and preventive medicine at CDC and infectious diseases fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. He was adjunct professor and course coordinator of two epidemiology courses at Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. He has co-authored over 265 peer-review publications, book chapters, and government publications.
David has had a long-standing interest in infectious disease modeling. At CDC he led a Modeling Unit in the NCIRD; a collaborative effort with CCDD and Imperial College. He coordinated several modeling short courses for CDC epidemiologists working with CCDD, Imperial College, and the University of Hong Kong. He organized a symposium at IDSA on use of modeling to address public health threats. He was Co-Chair of the Pandemic Prediction and Forecasting Science and Technology Working Group (sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy). He was guest editor of three Clinical Infectious Diseases journal supplements on the role of modeling and field epidemiology in response to potential influenza pandemics. He has co-authored numerous papers describing transmission models of seasonal, pandemic, and novel influenza, Ebola, MERS, typhoid fever, pertussis, and SARS-CoV-2. At Pfizer he initiated modeling projects with CCDD, the University of Utah, and Columbia University to understand the true burden of COVID-19 in the United States, predict future attack rates to optimize clinical trial timing and ideal locations of trial sites, the impact of national vaccination programs, and optimal vaccination strategies in long-term-care settings as well as in the community.