Faculty Directory

Biography

Dr. Kristy Murray is the newly named Chief Research Officer at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Professor and Executive Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University. Prior to her new appointment, she served as the Vice-Chair for Research for the Department of Pediatrics and Professor of Pediatrics in the section of Pediatric Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. She also served as the Assistant Dean for Faculty and Academic Development for the National School of Tropical Medicine and Director of the Center for Human Immunobiology at Texas Children’s Hospital. 

Dr. Murray received her doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Texas A&M University and her PhD in Preventative Medicine and Community Health, Clinical Investigations track, at the University of Texas Medical Branch. She spent the first five years of her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including two years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer conducting outbreak investigations, including the initial outbreak of West Nile virus in New York City in 1999, bubonic plague in Wyoming, and unexplained illness and deaths in injection drug users in Ireland. She also had the opportunity to work on the polio eradication campaign in Bangladesh and research lyssaviruses in the Philippines. She received several awards at CDC including the Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service for her work on the West Nile virus Encephalitis Investigation Team and for the Anthrax Investigation Emergency Response Team.

In 2002, Dr. Murray returned to Texas and joined the faculty in the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health (2002-2012). In 2012, she was recruited to Baylor College of Medicine as a founding faculty member of the National School of Tropical Medicine. Her research over the past 20+ years has been focused on both laboratory- and clinically-based studies related to emerging infectious diseases, including West Nile virus, dengue, rickettsia, Chagas disease, Zika virus, COVID-19, and rabies. Her field studies are predominately based in global health settings, including Nicaragua, Belize, El Salvador, and the Philippines. She teaches graduate-level courses on epidemiology and infectious diseases and advises master’s and PhD-level students. Dr. Murray has received several awards for her work in academia, including the Innovation in Health Science Education Award from the UT Academy of Health Science Education, Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, the UT Health Science Center Young Investigator Award, and the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine’s Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2013, she received the Bailey Ashford Medal from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene for her work in tropical medicine, and she was elected to the American Pediatric Society. Dr. Murray is an Associate Editor for PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and serves on the editorial board of the journal Epidemiology and Infection and has authored more than 160 scientific and technical papers.