Guy Palmer (Photo by Henry Moore Jr.)
Guy Palmer, a leading expert in global health and infectious diseases, will deliver the 2025 University of Georgia George H. Boyd Lecture on April 17 in the Coverdell Center.
A Regents’ Professor of Pathology and Infectious Diseases at Washington State University, Palmer founded the Paul G. Allen School for Global Health and currently serves as senior director of Global Health. He also serves on the advisory council for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the National Institutes of Health’s 27 institutes and centers.
Palmer was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine in 2006, is a Medical Sciences Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and a founding member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences, where he served as president from 2012-13.
Palmer’s lecture will explore how environmental factors and resource availability affect global health challenges. Titled “Addressing One Health challenges unique to low-income communities: Lessons from East Africa and Central America,” the talk will be divided into three topics: early childhood nutrition, antibiotic resistance and rabies control in Africa.
Palmer emphasizes that universities like UGA play a crucial role in tackling these issues by fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across public health, veterinary medicine and environmental science.
“UGA is perfectly set to tackle these challenges,” he said. “With its veterinary college, infectious disease research, and now a medical school being built, it has all the pieces in place. Students want to change the world, and universities are where that energy meets expertise to solve real problems.”
Free to the public, the George H. Boyd Distinguished Lecture Series honors the UGA Graduate School’s former dean, who was known for his commitment to education and research. The lecture series is supported by the Office of Research and the William S. and Elizabeth K. Boyd Foundation. Each lecture brings national leaders and policymakers in science, education and related fields to the university to talk about applications of research to contemporary issues in education.
The 2025 Boyd Lecture will take place on April 17 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. in Room 175 of the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences. A reception will be held in the Coverdell lobby following the lecture.
