Staff Bio
Ermias Belay, MD
Public Health Infrastructure Center
Dr. Belay serves as Acting Director of the CDC's Public Health Infrastructure Center, providing expert leadership in strategy, science, and organizational priorities to advance public health systems and initiatives.
Role at CDC
In this role, Dr. Belay provides scientific leadership and guidance to the center and collaborates closely with the public health community to strengthen the public health infrastructure and workforce of the United States.
Previous experience
Dr. Belay has served in various positions at CDC for more than 25 years, mainly focusing on infectious diseases. In his many roles at the agency, he provided scientific leadership and oversight of research studies, outbreak investigations, and public health programs.
Prior to his current role as the acting director for PHIC, Dr. Belay was the first PHIC Principal Deputy Director, setting scientific and organizational priorities and strategies.
His distinguished career also included time as the Associate Director for Epidemiology and Global Health in the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology (DHCPP) within CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. In DHCPP, he coordinated global health activities, 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.
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 150 publications in scientific journals with outstanding scientific impact.
Over the years, Dr. Belay has participated in many high-profile CDC emergency responses, including the Monkeypox 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.