Friday, Sept. 27, 8:30-9:45am CT
Location: Blake campus, Dining Commons (virtual option available)
The reunion edition of our popular Breakfast at Blake speaker series features 2024 Outstanding Alumna Award recipient Megan Murray '76. Q&A follows the presentation. Complimentary breakfast served. Register here by Monday, Sept. 23.
Megan Murray is a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a named professor at Harvard Medical School. As the Ronda Stryker and William Johnston Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine (GHSM), she directs the school’s research collaborative Murray’s work focuses on infectious disease epidemiology with special emphasis on tuberculosis (TB), COVID-19, Ebola and other emerging infectious diseases. She is considered one of the world’s leading experts on TB, conducting studies that have changed how we treat the disease by challenging the long-held assumption that drug-resistant TB is less transmissible and by investigating risk factors such as micronutrient deficiencies and diabetes. During the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, Murray helped evaluate the efficiency of a new rapid test to diagnose the virus.
In her evaluation of global health interventions and programs, including COVID-19 response, Murray focuses on research equity and capacity building to promote the health of vulnerable populations. She has conducted field studies in South Africa, Russia, the United States, India, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Niger and Rwanda. She conducts much of her research in Peru in collaboration with Partners in Health/Socios en Salud.
Murray is an editor for PLOS Medicine and for the European Journal of Epidemiology. She has served on numerous committees including the World Health Organization’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Tuberculosis (TB-STAG), the Stop TB MDR Working Group, Harvard University Human Subjects Committee, the Institute of Medicine Committee on Gulf War and Infectious Diseases and multiple National Institutes of Health study sections.
Murray received Harvard T.H. Chan School’s 2023 Alumni Award of Merit. In her award recognition, Harvard said Murray “has dedicated her four-decade career to improving people’s lives through groundbreaking—and actionable—research.”
While at Blake, Murray graduated cum laude and received the Dayton Scholastic Attainment Award and the Smith College Award in French. She earned her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in 1980, her Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School and her Sc.D. in epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 1990.