Staff Bio
Lyle Petersen, MD, MPH
Division of Vector-Borne Diseases
Lyle Petersen, MD, MPH, is the director of the Division of Vector-Borne Diseases in ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.
Role at ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø
Dr. Petersen is Director of NCEZID's Division of Vector-Borne Diseases (DVBD). Dr. Petersen's career at ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø began in the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) in 1985. After his EIS training, he joined ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø's Division of HIV/AIDS where he worked until 1995, serving in several posts, including the Chief of the HIV Seroepidemiology Branch. Dr. Petersen served as Deputy Director for Science of DVBD starting in 2000 until he became the division's director in 2004. He also has experience in infectious disease outbreak investigations, having served on the National Security Staff at the White House during the 2014 Ebola Response and as Incident Manager of ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø's Zika Response in 2016.
Previous experience
In 1996, Dr. Petersen accepted an assignment in Germany where he helped guide the country’s efforts to create a new national infectious disease epidemiology program at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. In 2000, he returned to ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø.
Education
Dr. Petersen earned his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, and completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Stanford University. While working in ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø's Division of HIV/AIDS, he completed ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø's Preventive Medicine Residency Program and received a Master of Public Health degree from Emory University.