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Epidemiologist Ben Lopman to deliver 2026 Distinguished Faculty Lecture
portrait of epidemiologist Ben Lopman of Rollins School of Public Health

Ben Lopman, a professor of epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health, will present the 2026 John F. Morgan Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture on Thursday, April 23. He will speak on “The Infectious Diseases We Choose.”

— Kay Hinton, Emory Photo/Video

Ben Lopman, professor of epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health, will present the 2026 John F. Morgan, Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture on Thursday, April 23.

Lopman’s research focuses on vaccines for enteric and respiratory pathogens, with particular emphasis on diarrheal diseases caused by rotavirus and norovirus. His work integrates field studies, statistical analysis and dynamic mathematical modeling to address policy-relevant public health questions. He is the principal investigator on multiple grants from the NIH, NSF, CDC, WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications.

Lopman will speak on “The Infectious Diseases We Choose” during his lecture on Thursday, April 23, at 5 p.m. in Convocation Hall, Room 208. A reception will follow in Room 210.

The annual lectureship honors the exceptional contributions of Emory faculty members and provides an opportunity to reflect on and celebrate excellence in scholarship and service.

Register to attend by Friday, April 17.


More about “The Infectious Diseases We Choose”


During his lecture, Lopman will connect several topics related to epidemiologists’ work. He summarizes it as:

I have spent my career counting things that didn't have to happen. Most of them were diseases that nobody noticed — not because they were rare, but because they were always there. Knowing things in epidemiology — with sufficient rigor to act — turns out to be much harder than it sounds. It requires painstaking work: establishing the scale of suffering, testing whether an intervention works under controlled conditions, then going into the real world to implement it. And it requires the discipline to revise your conclusions when new evidence demands it.

When that process works, it yields something remarkable: the capacity to see deaths that don’t have to happen, then to prevent them. The infectious diseases that emerge, persist or remain endemic are not inevitable. They are, to a large extent, choices. But making choices requires seeing problems clearly.

The constancy of endemic diseases makes them easy to stop seeing. Epidemiologists aim to count what is easy to ignore, then ask the counterfactual — what happens if we act, or fail to? That capacity for clear sight now faces a threat greater than any policy or personality: the erosion of the shared commitment to rigorous, self-correcting inquiry — and the willingness to update our understanding when new evidence demands it. This lecture draws on over two decades of my research — and a personal reckoning with what it means to do this work right now. How do we stay present, doing meaningful work in a difficult moment without being consumed by it?


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