As a child of missionary parents based in Bangkok, Thailand, Glenn Morris saw at first hand the waves of pandemic cholera that struck southeast Asia each summer. “That experience left me with the indelible sense of the drama and urgency of dealing with an emerging pathogen,” he says.

Back in the United States for college, Morris got a bachelor's degree in both biology and history from Rice University in Houston, Texas. He then went on to take an MD at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana. At Tulane, he also studied dengue virus while getting his master's in public health and tropical medicine.

Later, as an epidemic intelligence officer with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he dealt with cholera outbreaks at refugee camps in Thailand. Upon his return to the United States, Morris completed his residency before beginning a fellowship — and what turned out to be a 25-year career — at the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland. Focusing on the molecular genetics of pathogens, he developed molecular markers and used molecular fingerprinting to understand transmission pathways.

Morris honed his laboratory techniques over the next decade, then used them in clinical epidemiological research. He also served on National Academy of Sciences panels, addressing government policies on food-borne disease. An outspoken critic, he helped restructure US Department of Agriculture regulations to include the first microbial standards for food safety. “That was an exciting couple of years, watching ideas take shape into regulation,” he says.

He now plans to use his public health and policy know-how as the director of the University of Florida's new $50-million Emerging Pathogens Institute in Gainesville. Myron Levine, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Vaccine Development, says that Morris's wide-ranging mix of talents make him well suited to head an institute in a state susceptible to myriad food- and water-borne infectious diseases.

Noting Morris's work in Thailand, James Hughes, a former director of the CDC's centre for infectious diseases who is now at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, says that although many in the infectious diseases field try to combine strengths in epidemiology and microbiology, “solid international experience is vitally important”.