NYU Langone Health today announced today the appointment of Mark J. Mulligan, MD, as director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology and the inaugural director of the Vaccine Center at NYU Langone Health.

For more than three decades, Dr. Mulligan has been an international leader in infectious disease research programs. Effective today, he will oversee research and clinical operations in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, as well as establish a new Vaccine Center at NYU Langone Health.

Before coming to NYU Langone, Dr. Mulligan held several positions at Emory University, including associate division director for clinical and translational research in the Division of Infectious Diseases; and executive director of the Hope Clinic, the clinical arm of the Emory Vaccine Center. In those roles he focused both on vaccine clinical trials, and on immune system studies that yielded vaccine candidates.

“We are delighted that Mark will be joining the NYU School of Medicine faculty. His dual leadership roles as director of both the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology and the new Vaccine Center will allow him to bring his extraordinary expertise to interdisciplinary research across the medical school and university,” said Steven Abramson, MD, senior vice president and vice dean for education, faculty and academic affairs.

“The recruitment of Dr. Mulligan signals our commitment as an institution to the pursuit of science-based solutions to infectious disease outbreaks that pose an ongoing threat to global human health,” said Dafna Bar-Sagi, PhD, senior vice president and vice dean for science, and chief scientific officer.

Dr. Mulligan has been a leader in the design of HIV vaccine clinical trials in particular, including his tenure as lead investigator for the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)–funded Emory-CDC HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Unit. As part of that effort, he conducted HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis research at research clinics in Atlanta, Kenya, the Philippines, and Thailand.

His laboratory also led the design of standard tests by which the effectiveness of vaccines is judged globally. Dr. Mulligan also served as the principal investigator for the NIAID–funded Emory Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit, one of nine national units funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Beyond vaccines, his wide-ranging scientific work includes studies underway that seek to counter the development of resistance to antibiotics by microbes. This includes work on an experimental treatment for Clostridium difficile—a major, often deadly, hospital-borne bacterial infection—in the form of a capsule containing healthy gut bacteria replacements.

"We're very excited to welcome Dr. Mulligan to NYU Langone,” says David Oshinsky, PhD, director of the Division of Medical Humanities, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Polio: An American Story. “Our faculty and graduates, including Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk, have long been pioneers in life-saving vaccine research, and by founding a world class vaccine development center here, Dr. Mulligan will help to create the next generation of leaders.”

As a premier educator, Dr. Mulligan has been awarded national research mentoring awards, and has trained many students in translational research that are now leaders in their fields. He received a bachelor of science from the University of Notre Dame (cum laude), his doctor of medicine from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, in Dallas, and trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Media Inquiries

Lisa Greiner
Phone: 212-404-3532
lisa.greiner@nyulangone.org