Associate Director for Laboratory Science

CDC role

CAPT Anne Purfield, PhD, serves as the Associate Director for Laboratory Science for the Global Health Center. CAPT Purfield's team leads strategic planning, workforce, and program development related to laboratory activities in global health and the development and implementation of CDC’s global health agenda. Her team works across the agency on laboratory governance and quality, biosafety, and biosecurity systems improvement. CAPT Purfield also collaborates with multilateral partners to efficiently implement global laboratory activities to build capacity for public health surveillance and response.

Previous experience

Before joining the Global Health Center’s Office of the Director, CAPT Purfield served as Associate Director for Laboratory Science in CDC’s Ethiopia country office. In this role, she worked to build laboratory capacity, surveillance, and emergency response activities across the Center’s divisions and programs.

Before joining CDC, CAPT Purfield worked for FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research as a Primary Reviewer for new anti-parasitic, anti-bacterial, and anti-fungal drugs as well as drug products for anthrax and tuberculosis.

Prior to this role, CAPT Purfield directed laboratory operations for the Tuberculosis Trials Consortium in the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination in CDC's National HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP). There, CAPT Purfield led efforts to harmonize and develop methods and protocols for TB clinical trials across multiple TB trial networks. CAPT Purfield also directed implementation and laboratory data collection to achieve high quality trial results.

In 2012, CAPT Purfield joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) and was assigned to the CDC's Mycotic Diseases Branch.

Areas of expertise

CAPT Purfield directed Study 31—a phase 3 clinical trial. The trial showed that the drug-susceptible pulmonary TB treatment regimen can be shortened to just four months.

Education

CAPT Purfield received a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studied mechanisms of resistance and modes of action for drugs against Plasmodium falciparum, a parasite that causes malaria.