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Denis Nash, PhD, MPH, is Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and founding executive director of the CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health. A former CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, he studies HIV, emerging infections, public health surveillance, and climate and health.

Denis Nash, PhD, MPH, is Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and founding executive director of the CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health. He began his career as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, helping investigate the 1999 West Nile virus outbreak in New York City, and later directed HIV/AIDS surveillance at the New York City Department of Health.

His research uses large cohort studies, routine surveillance data, and close partnerships with health departments to study HIV prevention and care in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa, respiratory and emerging infections, wastewater surveillance, and the health effects of extreme weather. He has led and collaborated on large-scale research studies on HIV care and treatment scale-up in more than 20 sub-Saharan African countries, much of it in connection with the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He co-leads the Central Africa IeDEA cohort collaboration and is associate director of the Einstein-Rockefeller-CUNY Center for AIDS Research. He has published more than 370 peer-reviewed papers and was a 2025-26 Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair at Sorbonne Université in Paris.

Denis Nash, PhD, MPH, is Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and founding executive director of the CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH). His work sits where research, surveillance, and public health practice meet.

He began his career as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer assigned to New York City, where he helped investigate the 1999 outbreak of West Nile virus, the virus's first appearance in the Western Hemisphere. That work earned the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Award for Distinguished Service. He went on to direct HIV/AIDS surveillance at the New York City Department of Health, and then joined the faculty of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health before moving to CUNY.

His research draws on large cohort studies, electronic health records, routine surveillance data, and close partnerships with health departments and programs. Since 2004 he has worked on HIV cohort studies across sub-Saharan Africa, largely in connection with the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He co-leads the Central Africa region of the International Epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) collaboration and co-chairs its Implementation Science Working Group. His current studies follow influenza, RSV, and COVID-19 infections in a national cohort, use hospital and community wastewater to detect outbreaks early, and estimate how floods, heat, and storms affect HIV and TB care. He applies modern causal inference and implementation science methods to draw sound conclusions from real-world data. He is associate director of the Einstein-Rockefeller-CUNY Center for AIDS Research and has published more than 370 peer-reviewed papers.

A frequent public voice on epidemics, he has appeared in more than 370 news stories and interviews, including The New York Times, NPR, CBS News, The Guardian, and the BBC, and has written commentary for STAT, CNN, and NBC News. He teaches infectious disease epidemiology and public health surveillance and mentors doctoral students and early-career researchers. In 2025-26 he held a Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair at Sorbonne Université in Paris, and he advises organizations through his consulting firm, Epidemic Intelligence. He holds a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Maryland, an MPH from Johns Hopkins, and a BS in physics from Drexel University.