Mark S. Klempner, M.D.

Director, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories

Dr. Mark S. Klempner serves as the Director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. In addition, Dr. Klempner is the Associate Provost for Research at Boston University Medical Campus where he also serves as the Conrad Wesselhoeft Professor of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology.  Dr. Klempner graduated from Cornell Medical College where he was the recipient of the Teagle Scholarship as valedictorian.  He continued his post doctoral internal medicine clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital followed by post doctoral infectious diseases clinical and research training at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. 

Dr. Klempner spent the next 20 years at Tufts University-New England Medical Center where he served as the Endicott Professor of Medicine, Vice Chairman for Scientific Affairs and Chairman of the New England Medical Center Research Council.  He joined Boston University Medical Campus in 2001 to pursue his research interests and to promote collaborative biomedical research programs at Boston University and its sister academic medical center, Boston Medical Center. 

Dr. Klempner’s research interests have focused on the molecular aspects of how infectious agents cause human disease.  He has pioneered studies on the emerging infectious disease, Lyme Disease, ranging from how the bacteria invades the tick vector, intermediate hosts and humans, to vaccine development against this disease, to studies on treatments for this infection.   In 2003, under Dr. Klempner’s leadership, Boston University was awarded a $141 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to build a research institute to study emerging infectious diseases, including re-emerging infectious diseases.  Construction of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories Institute on the medical campus is nearly completed. The focus of research is on basic science and translational studies leading to improved understanding of the pathogenesis of these infections, and development of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for emerging infectious diseases.      

Dr. Klempner is the author of over 260 scientific publications and a contributor to 17 books.  He has been honored for his accomplishments by numerous awards and appointments.  He serves as Associate Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and was Chairman of the Subspecialty Board on Infectious Diseases of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), Board of Directors of the ABIM, President of the Association of Subspecialty Professors and member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.  He is the recipient of the Squibb and Abbott Awards from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, has been repeatedly cited as one of the Best Doctors in America, and was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.