Faculty Expert Profile

Justin Lessler is a professor of epidemiology who focuses on infectious diseases. The main focus of his research is to better understand and control infectious diseases through the development and use of statistics, dynamic models, and novel study designs.

Lessler is most interested in creating synergies between infection control practice, data collection, and infectious disease dynamics. He and his collaborators have been able to achieve such synergy when they developed methods to estimate the distribution of incubation periods for an infectious disease using coarse data, applied these methods to develop the best available estimates for a number of viruses, and showed how these estimates can be used to improve infection control practice.

His current research projects include work on the transmission of dynamics of influenza in southern China, and the most effective use of vaccine in the control of measles and cholera. Lessler is a member of the Johns Hopkins Infectious Disease Dynamics Group and is affiliated with the Center for Global Health. The center is a collaboration among all of the schools within Johns Hopkins to harness their expertise to address global health challenges such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other threats, especially in developing countries.