Board of Directors

Chris Beyrer, MD, MPH, an internationally recognized epidemiologist who has worked on the front lines of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 treatment and research, became director of the Duke Global Health Institute in August 2022.

Beyrer has led collaborative research on HIV prevention and treatment in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia for more than 30 years. He is past president of the International AIDS Society, the world’s largest body of HIV professionals, and has served as advisor to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the National Institutes of Health’s Office of AIDS Research, the World Health Organization, and numerous other agencies and institutions. He was named in 2022 to the annual list of the world’s most cited scientists, based on citation data compiled by Clarivate.

Before coming to Duke, Beyrer was the inaugural Desmond M. Tutu Professor of Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he served as associate director of the JHU Center for AIDS Research and the Center for Global Health. He was the founding director of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights. He received his medical degree from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and holds a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2014 and serves on the Academy’s Board for Global Health and the Committee for Human Rights.

Dr. Shyam Bishen is a senior healthcare executive with over 25 years of global experience in healthcare public-private partnership, strategy development, M&A, and business development. He comes to the Forum from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle where he was a regional/deputy director for seven years and was responsible for partnering to harness advances in healthcare to save lives. Before moving to Gates Foundation, he spent more than 20 years in private sector, and most recently headed up emerging markets strategy & innovation at Merck (MSD) in New Jersey as vice president and general manager. Prior to joining the corporate sector, Dr. Bishen was in academia and worked as an Assistant Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. He is qualified with a Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Victor J. Dzau is President of the National Academy of Medicine, Chancellor Emeritus at Duke University and former CEO of the Duke University Health System.  Professor Dzau has made a significant impact through his seminal research in cardiovascular medicine and his leadership in health care innovation. He has led the creation of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (with Paul Farmer & Jim Kim), Duke Translational Medicine Institute, Duke Global Health Institute, Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, and Duke Institute for Health Innovation.  He has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of National Institutes of Health (NIH) and chaired the NIH Cardiovascular Disease Advisory Committee. Currently he is a member of the Board of the Singapore Health System, Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar, the Expert Board of the Imperial College Health Partners, UK, and the International Advisory Board of the Biomedical Science Council of Singapore. He chaired the Global Agenda Council on Personalized and Precision Medicine of the World Economic Forum.  Among his many honors are the Gustav Nylin Medal from the Swedish Royal College of Medicine, Distinguished Scientist Award from American Heart Association and the Public Service Medal from the President of Singapore.  

Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, is the Robert J. Margolis Professor of Business, Medicine, and Policy, and Director of the Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University. He is a physician-economist who focuses on quality and value in health care including payment reform, real-world evidence and more effective drug and device innovation. He is former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, where he developed and implemented major reforms in health policy. He was previously Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a faculty member at Stanford University. 

Dr. Susanna Naggie, MD, MHS, is a Professor of Medicine with tenure, and currently holds appointments at Duke University School of Medicine, the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Duke Clinical Research Institute. She is the Vice Dean for Clinical Research, and currently serves as the Chair of the Hepatitis Transformative Science Group for the AIDS Clinical Trials Group and as a member of the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines, DHHS Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents and the CDC/NIH/IDSA-HIVMA Opportunistic Infections Guideline. Her research has focused on HIV and liver disease including HCV, HBV and fatty liver disease.

Dr. Krishna Udayakumar leads multiple initiatives at Duke in the rapidly evolving fields of health innovation and globalization of healthcare. He is Executive Director of Innovations in Healthcare, a non-profit co-founded by Duke, McKinsey & Company, and the World Economic Forum, leading all aspects of the organization’s work to support the scale and replication of transformative health solutions globally. He also leads the newly established Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University, focused on generating deeper evidence and support for the study and scaling of health innovations globally. 

As Head of Global Innovation for Duke Health, Dr. Udayakumar is responsible for the development and implementation of global strategy as well as global business development for Duke Health, across healthcare delivery, biomedical sciences research, and health professions education and training.

At Duke University, Dr. Udayakumar holds the rank of Associate Professor of Global Health and Medicine, and is an Associate Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore. His work has been published in leading academic journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, and Academic Medicine.                                                                           

Born in Bangalore, India, Dr. Udayakumar spent his childhood in Virginia, and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia, with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies with distinction. He received both an MD and an MBA (with a concentration in Health Sector Management) from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar. Dr. Udayakumar completed his residency training in internal medicine at Duke and served as Assistant Chief Resident at the Durham VA Medical Center before joining the faculty of Duke University.