2025 CSTE Annual Conference | Plenary Sessions Key Speakers

Michael Osterholm is Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health and the founding director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), at the University of Minnesota. An internationally renowned epidemiologist and former state epidemiologist of Minnesota, during his fifty years in the field he has led many investigations of outbreaks of international importance.

Dr. Osterholm is the author, with Mark Olshaker, of Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, and with John Schwartz, of Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe, both of which were The New York Times best-sellers. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health named Deadliest Enemy the Number One Global Health Book of 2017.

Osterholm appears regularly in the media as a commentator on public health and is the host of the popular “Osterholm Update” podcast, with more than 175 episodes. He has authored or coauthored more than 350 papers and abstracts, including twenty-one book chapters. He serves on the editorial boards of nine journals and has been an international leader regarding preparedness for an influenza pandemic and has sounded the alarm regarding critical infectious disease threats in Foreign Affairs, the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature as well as the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. He has been an international leader on the growing concern regarding the use of biological agents as catastrophic weapons targeting civilian populations. In that role, he served as a personal advisor to the late King Hussein of Jordan.

He served as a special advisor to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson. His successor, Secretary Michael Leavitt appointed Osterholm to the newly established National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, and he was a member of President Elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Advisory Board.  From 2017 through 2019 he was a science envoy for the US State Department. He serves on the Board of Regents of Luther College and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Council of Foreign Relations and numerous other professional organizations. He and his partner, Fern Peterson, live in Minneapolis.

Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi is the Professor and Chair of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, USA. Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Kuchipudi held various academic and clinical positions. He served as the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and director of Penn State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. He was previously faculty at the University of Nottingham in the UK. Dr. Kuchipudi is a veterinary clinician with a Ph.D. in virology from the University of Glasgow, UK, an MBA from Penn State Smeal College of Business, and a diplomate in virology and immunology from the American College of Veterinary Microbiologists (ACVM). His primary research focuses on emerging and zoonotic viruses; his multidisciplinary research aims to understand virus spillover and adaptation, developing innovative diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics. He promotes a transdisciplinary approach through ‘One Health’ initiatives, fostering multisector partnerships and building impactful international collaborations.

Anne Schuchat, MD is an internist and epidemiologist who was Principal Deputy Director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2015-2021 and served twice as acting director.  She was the first Director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) from 2005-2015.  Schuchat joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1988 and played key roles in numerous emergency responses including the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019 outbreak of vaping associated lung injuries, the West Africa Ebola epidemic, 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and the 2003 SARS outbreak where she deployed to Beijing. In the 1990’s, Dr. Schuchat spearheaded US guidelines which have prevented more than 100,000 life-threatening group B streptococcal infections in newborns so far. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and received the CSTE’s Pump Handle Award in 2020.  Dr. Schuchat retired as a Rear Admiral (upper half) in the Commissioned Corps of the USPHS in 2018 and from CDC in 2021.  She serves on the boards of Swarthmore College and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.