Africa Initiative

Mark Lurie is a tenured Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. He is affiliated with the Center for Global Public Health, the Brown Pandemic Center, The Population Studies and Training Center and previously served as Director of the International Health Institute from 2021 to 2024. Lurie also serves as an honorary professor at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Lurie's expertise is on human migration and it’s impact on the spread of infectious diseases and his research focuses on 1) developing novel methods for measuring human social interaction in order to better model the spread of how infectious diseases move through populations and to test and develop interventions aimed at slowing transmission; 2) quantifying the public health impact of antiretroviral (ART) HIV therapy;3) testing different methods for partner notification among South Africans seeking care for STIs; 4) improving linkage and adherence to care among HIV-infected adults in Cape Town and 5) a collaboration with the University of Cape Town to train the next generation of social scientists able to combat the HIV epidemic. His work has been funded by the NIH (R01, R24, K01), the National Science Foundation and the Welcome Trust (U.K.). He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and is the author of three books.