Steve Luby

Stephen Luby is a physician, epidemiologist and researcher who lived and worked in Karachi, Pakistan for 5 years at the Aga Khan University and in Dhaka, Bangladesh for 8 years at the International Centre for Diarrheal Research, Bangladesh. For the last 30 years Dr. Luby’s research efforts have engaged a broad array of health issues in low income countries. Dr. Luby currently serves as the faculty co-director for the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative, the Associate Dean for Global Health Research, and the faculty director of Stanford’s Human and Planetary Health initiative. He is also appointed as a Professor of Medicine in the Infectious Diseases Division and a Senior Fellow to Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Dr. Luby is a prolific researcher who, by deeply engaging with local collaborators, has assessed pandemic risks for Nipah and influenza viruses and strategies to reduce these risks. He engaged in several efforts to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in lower income countries. Dr. Luby convenes multidisciplinary teams that combine skills in qualitative methods, laboratory investigations, observational designs, intervention development, engineering and rigorous quantitative evaluation. With Paul Edwards he teaches a popular course to Stanford freshman entitled “Preventing Human Extinction.”