Roger I. Glass, MD, PhD became President of CMB on April 15, 2023. He brings to this role four decades of experience in global health, including leadership roles in public service, research, capacity building, and international collaboration.

Most recently, Dr. Glass served as the longest-serving Director of the Fogarty International Center (2006-2023) and as the Associate Director for International Research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). At the Fogarty International Center, he led efforts to support and facilitate global health research conducted by U.S. and international investigators, building partnerships between health research institutions in the United States and abroad, and training the next generation of scientists to address global health needs. During his tenure, NIH helped launch the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, partnered with PEPFAR to support the Medical Education Partnership Initiative in Africa, joined the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD), and launched the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Initiative, followed by Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa), to build research capacity on the African continent by African scientists.

Dr. Glass spent much of his career at the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC), starting as a medical officer assigned to the Environmental Hazards Branch in 1977. On secondment from CDC, he worked as a Scientist at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh from 1979-1983. In 1984, he joined the National Institutes of Health Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, where he worked on the molecular biology of rotavirus. In 1986, Dr. Glass returned to the CDC to become Chief of the Viral Gastroenteritis Unit at the National Center for Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Glass's research interests include the prevention of gastroenteritis from rotaviruses and other agents through the application of novel scientific research. He has maintained field studies in India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, Israel, Russia, Vietnam, China and elsewhere. His research has been targeted toward epidemiologic studies to anticipate the introduction of rotavirus vaccines. He has co-authored more than 600 research papers and chapters.

Dr. Glass graduated from Harvard College in 1967, received a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the University of Buenos Aires in 1967, and received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1972. He received his PhD in Medical Microbiology from the University of Goteborg, Sweden in 1984.  

Dr. Glass has received numerous awards including the prestigious Charles C. Shepard Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award presented by the CDC in recognition of his 30-year career of scientific research application and leadership and the Dr. Charles Merieux Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases for his work on rotavirus vaccines in the developing world. The Consortium of Universities of Global Health – an organization he helped found – presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in Global Health in April 2023, only the second time it has made such an award in its history. He also is the recipient of the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal Award, Georgetown University’s Cura Personalis Award, Research!America’s Geoffrey Beene Builders of Science Award, Rice University’s Rice 360˚ Institute for Global Health Award, and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. 

Dr Glass is married to Dr. Barbara J. Stoll, a neonatologist and former Chair of Pediatrics at Emory, former Dean of the McGovern School of Medicine in Houston, and the past president of the China Medical Board.