Joseph McCormick

Professor Joseph McCormick is affiliated with the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) School of Public Health, where he holds the James H. Steele, D.V.M. Professorship. He founded the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health campus in Brownsville in 2001, which has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles on health disparities and secured over $100 million in external funding.

• Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, raised on an Indiana farm
• MD from Duke University (1971), MS in Epidemiology from Harvard (1970)
• Trained at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia under C. Everett Koop (US Surgeon General)

His career spans groundbreaking epidemiological work, including investigating the first Ebola epidemics (1976 and 1979), leading CDC's Lassa fever project in Sierra Leone, and isolating the Hantavirus causing Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome. Current research focuses on chronic and infectious diseases in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) cohort of 5,000 individuals with 30+ collaborators.

McCormick co-authored the popular science book Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC with his wife, Dr. Susan Fisher-Hoch, which has been translated into seven languages. He is also a noted amateur pianist and outdoor enthusiast.