Congratulations Dr. Jerrold J. Ellner

We are very pleased to announce that on July 1, 2025, Dr. Jerrold J. Ellner (Professor of Medicine, Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) Department of Medicine and the Public Health Research Institute) and the Director of the RePORT International Coordinating Center, was promoted to Distinguished Professor. Rutgers confers the title of Distinguished Professor to faculty with an international reputation, outstanding achievements, and eminence in their fields.  

For five decades, Dr. Ellner has made seminal contributions in the fields of TB and HIV. Among his many achievements was the establishment of a model for collaborative multidisciplinary research on TB and HIV in low- and middle-income countries.  Within prospective cohort studies led by Dr. Ellner, cutting-edge immunology, microbiology (and virology) are embedded, which are efficient ways to study host-bacterial interactions, TB transmission, progression, and infrequent treatment. Dr. Ellner and colleagues were the group to apply this model to TB, beginning in Uganda in 1994 with the TB research unit (TBRU) program, which continues to this day. Ground-breaking studies showed, for example, that TB influenced HIV progression by activating its replication.  The TBRU also performed a sentinel study that demonstrated that preventive therapy of TB was effective in persons living with HIV.  This was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997 and led to a WHO recommendation for its broad implementation.  

Dr. Ellner has the masterful ability to pull together a team of leading scientists in the US and abroad to conduct collaborative studies that span the spectrum from basic, through translational, to clinical studies aimed at asking and answering the biggest questions affecting TB and HIV. These collaborations were only possible through his ability to obtain prolific funding for large, multi-million-dollar, multi-year NIH grants. Dr. Ellner’s work has resulted in the publication of close to 400 peer-reviewed papers.   

Dr. Ellner trained and mentored academic infectious diseases investigators and scientists in the US, Brazil, India, Japan, South Africa, and Uganda. When assembling large collaborative programs, he made a special point to include early-stage and junior investigators. Through these opportunities, he created stepping stones to many highly successful careers. As Chief of Infectious Diseases at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), NJMS, and Boston University, and as Interim Chair of Medicine at CWRU and Chair of Medicine at NJMS, Dr. Ellner trained generations of infectious disease physicians and an army of international clinicians and scientists who have themselves risen to become leaders in their respective clinical and research fields. Dr. Ellner rejoined the faculty at Rutgers-NJMS in 2018.  Not one to rest on his laurels, he is currently a Principal Investigator/Program Director of NIH-funded programs: The Feasibility of Novel Diagnostics for TB in Endemic Countries (FEND-TB), the TBRU, and RePORT International. We are delighted that Dr. Ellner has received this acknowledgement of his high achievements. Please join me in congratulating Jerry! 

Written by David Alland, MD  
Professor and Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases 
Director, Public Health Research Institute, Center for COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness, Rutgers Regional Bio-containment Laboratory, and Center for Emerging Pathogens 
Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School