Dr. Gregory Poland is the Director of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group – a state-of-the-art research group and laboratory devoted to developing new vaccines important to public health and understanding the genetic basis for vaccine response. Dr. Poland is the Mary Lowell Leary Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases, and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Dr. Poland is the Director of the Mayo Clinic Immunization Clinic and the Director of the Program in Translational Immunovirology and Biodefense. He also serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the journal “Vaccine.”

Recently, Dr. Poland founded the Jenner Society, an academic society for vaccinologists, and a memorial to Dr. Edward Jenner. In June 2008, Dr. Poland was awarded the distinction of Master in the American College of Physicians; he was also awarded the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence in December 2008, the Hsu prize in International Infectious Disease Epidemiology in 2007 by the University of Iowa, and the Charles Merieux Lifetime Achievement Award in Vaccinology from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases in May 2006. In December 2006, Dr. Poland was elected as the President of the Defense Health Board, serving two terms. He was appointed as the Mary Lowell Leary Professor in Medicine (the highest academic distinction for a faculty member) by Mayo Clinic’s Board of Trustees in 2004. In May 2003, he was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Since 2004, Dr. Poland has also served on the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) Taskforce on Pandemic Influenza. In 1998, he received a joint award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Care Financing Administration for his contribution to increasing adult immunization rates in the U.S. which was awarded by the Surgeon General of the United States. In 1997, he was honored as the “Outstanding Clinical Investigator of the Year” by the Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Poland participates on many national and academic review committees and actively peer-reviews journal articles for over 26 different publications such as The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine. A prolific writer, Dr. Poland has published over 350 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters.

Dr. Poland received his medical degree from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Illinois, and completed his residency and advanced post-graduate work at the University of Minnesota/Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis, MN.