UF EPI Director Glenn Morris to step down after 17 years of leadership

Dr. Morris stands in front of the construction of the EPI building with a hard hat on and his suit jacket over his shoulder.
Morris stands on the EPI building construction site in 2008. His vision for interdisciplinary, collaborative disease research informed the building’s design. EPI labs are open, work spaces, and the building has areas where faculty and students can gather to meet, talk and eat together.

J. Glenn Morris, Jr., M.D., M.P.H.T.M., is stepping down from his role as director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, a globally recognized powerhouse for infectious disease research.

Morris has helmed the EPI since its founding in 2007. The institute was established with a $60 million grant from the Florida legislature, with the aim of empowering the state to detect, monitor and manage highly dangerous pathogens in Florida and beyond.

As director, Morris, also a professor of infectious diseases, cultivated the EPI’s growth into a world-class, 93,000-square-foot facility, with specialized laboratories for investigating epidemics and bioterrorism. Today, the institute includes more than 250 faculty members, representing 13 UF colleges, who study diseases of people, plants and animals in over 50 countries. EPI members have published more than 5,000 scientific papers since 2011, producing highly original, interdisciplinary work that has earned the institute a global reputation for excellence.

“Over the past 17 years, Glenn Morris has grown the EPI into exactly the kind of resource we envisioned for Florida, serving as a sentinel against new threats, then responding when they emerge,” said David Norton, Ph.D., UF’s vice president for research. “Never was this more true than during the pandemic, when EPI faculty were on the front lines of developing tests and treatments for the disease. The UF Emerging Pathogens Institute would not be the nationally recognized leader it is today without the visionary leadership of Glenn Morris.”

Expanding the boundaries of infectious disease research

Tasked with a mandate to create the EPI from the ground up, Morris saw an opportunity to establish a research institute focused on interdisciplinary collaboration. He believed that successfully tackling infectious disease outbreaks in a connected world – where any pathogen could be a plane ride away – required breaking down the institutional barriers that kept scientists from joining forces.


Written by: Natalie van Hoose