Denis Nash

He is also Associate Director of the Einstein‑Rockefeller‑CUNY Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). His work sits at the intersection of infectious‐disease epidemiology, public‑health surveillance, and the use of epidemiologic methods to conduct rigorous assessments of programmatic effectiveness. For more than two decades he has designed and led “real‑world” studies in both U.S. and global settings, with a particular focus on HIV. Nash has spearheaded, or collaborated on, large‑scale investigations of HIV care and treatment scale‑up in more than 20 sub‑Saharan African countries—much of it linked to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He currently co‑leads the Central Africa regional cohort of the International Epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) and recently launched an innovative study to assess how extreme weather events (e.g., drought and heavy rainfall) affect HIV care outcomes for more than 2 million people living with HIV across 44 countries. Nash has led the design and launch of large, fully remote cohort platforms to study respiratory infections. In March 2020 he and colleagues launched the CHASING COVID Cohort (C³) Study, one of the first U.S. community‑based studies to track SARS‑CoV‑2 prospectively in real time. C³ has followed 6,500 adults nationwide with regular study measurements, including repeated serologic testing, generating pivotal evidence on infection risk, vaccine uptake, long‑COVID, and a range of other outcomes affected by the pandemic. Building on that infrastructure, Nash and his team recently launched Project PROTECTS, a national cohort of 6,000+ participants that pairs at‑home multi-pathogen rapid tests with mail‑in PCR and saliva specimens to monitor the incidence of SARS‑CoV‑2, influenza A, influenza B, and RSV and to characterize acute and post‑acute symptom burdens. Nash is also actively involved in research to advance wastewater surveillance as a tool for pandemic preparedness. Nash’s research portfolio, funded primarily by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, has generated >350 peer-reviewed publications that inform clinical guidelines, implementation strategies, and public‑health policy. Earlier in his career, Nash served as Director of HIV/AIDS Surveillance at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where he helped implement named HIV reporting. He also served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer with the U.S. CDC, contributing to the investigation that first detected West Nile virus in New York in 1999. Dr. Nash teaches Graduate‑level courses in Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Public Health Surveillance and has mentored more than 100 master’s, doctoral, and post‑doctoral trainees in epidemiology, public health, and implementation science. A frequent source for local, national and international media, he translates complex evidence into clear insights on emerging public‑health threats. Nash was recently selected as a 2025‑26 Fulbright‑Tocqueville Distinguished Chair in Public Health, a role he will use to expand his epidemiologic research on the causal effects of climate change and extreme‑weather events on population‑health outcomes. For a list of Nash’s publications, go to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/denis.nash.1/bibliography/public/?sortby=pubDate&sdirection=descending.