PERSON: Maria Van Kerkhove

World Health Organization

Acting Director of Epidemic and Pandemic Threat Management

Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove (born February 20, 1977) is an American infectious disease epidemiologist. With a background in high-threat pathogens, Van Kerkhove specializes in emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and is based in the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization (WHO). She is the technical lead of Covid-19 response and the head of emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at WHO.

Van Kerkhove was born Maria Rosanne DeJoseph in New Hartford, New York. In 1999, she received a B.S. in biological sciences from Cornell University.

In 2000, she received an M.S. in epidemiology from Stanford University School of Medicine.

In 2009, she earned a Ph.D. in infectious disease epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where she wrote her thesis on the avian flu in Cambodia.

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