Departmental Affiliations
Center & Institute Affiliations
Contact Info
Research Interests
infectious diseases; emerging infections; One Health; surveillance; outbreak investigation; Nipah virus; arboviruses
Experiences & Accomplishments
Dr. Gurley leads multi-disciplinary studies on the transmission, burden and epidemiology of a variety of emerging and vaccine preventable diseases, taking into account the ecological context in which human disease occurs. Her interests include improving the communication and collaboration between field epidemiologists and infectious disease modelers and development of novel surveillance and outbreak detection strategies. She has been working to describe the ecology and epidemiology of Nipah virus since 2004, including identifying transmission pathways and drivers of person-to-person transmission, and designing and testing interventions to prevent human infection.
Dr. Gurley has worked in Bangladesh since 2003, and she spent 12 years at the icddr,b (International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research, Bangladesh) where she led the Surveillance and Outbreak Investigation Unit, and served as Director of the Program on Emerging Infections. She worked closely with the US CDC and the Government of Bangladesh to establish national surveillance for meningo-encephalitis, respiratory infections, acute gastroenteritis, acute hepatitis, and hospital acquired infections, with a focus on developing junior scientists.
Her research adopts a One Health approach to the study and prevention of infectious disease, taking into account the ecological context in which human disease occurs. Emily is the Co-Director for the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) site in Bangladesh, aiming to determine the etiology of and prevent child deaths. She also serves on the Lancet Commission for Prevention of Viral Spillover and as a Board Member for the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH).
Honors & Awards
Excellence in the US COVID-19 Public Health Practice for Coursera course COVID-19 Contact Tracing, 2021
Coursera Outstanding Achievement Award for Innovation for the COVID-19 Contact Tracing course, 2021
Shikani/El-Hibri Prize for Discovery and Innovation for contributions to the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School or Public Health, 2020.
Paper selected as one of 6 best articles published in Indoor Air during 2014 – 2016:
Salje H, Gurley ES, Homaira N, Ram PK, Haque R, Petri W, Bresee J, Moss WJ, Lessler J, Luby SP, Breysse P, Azziz-Baumgartner E. Daily patterns of indoor particulate matter concentrations in a low-income community in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Indoor Air, 2014; DOI:10.1111/ina.12065.
Paper selected as one of the 10 best articles published in American Journal of Epidemiology in 2014: Gurley ES, Salje H, Homaira N, Ram PK, Haque R, Petri W, Bresee J, Moss WJ, Luby SP, Breysse P, Azziz-Baumgartner E. Indoor exposure to particulate matter and children’s age at first acute lower respiratory infection in a low-income, urban community in Bangladesh. American Journal of Epidemiology, Mar 2014;doi: 10.1093/aje/kwu002.
Paper nominated for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2013 Charles C. Shepard Science Award: Rahman MA, Hossain MJ, Sultana S, Homaira N, Khan MSU, Rahman M, Gurley ES, Rollin PE, Comer JA, Lowe L, Rota PA, Ksiazek TG, Kenah E, Sharker Y, Luby SP. Date palm sap linked to a Nipah virus outbreak in Bangladesh, 2008. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, 2012 Jan; 12(1): 65-72.
Inaugural recipient of the Abe Lilienfeld student award for excellence in applied epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2011
Spirit of Oglethorpe Award, Oglethorpe University Alumni Association, 2010
Emory University Women’s Club Scholar, 2002
OC Hubert Fellow, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 2001
Select Publications
Selected publications
Duque MP, Paul KK, Sultana R, Ribeiro Dos Santos G, O’Driscoll M, Naser AM, Rahman M, Alam MS, Al-Amin HM, Rahman MZ, Hossain ME, Paul RC, Krainski E, Luby SP, Cauchemez S, Vanhomwegen J, Gurley ES, Salje H. National burden of and optimal vaccine policy for Japanese encephalitis virus in Bangladesh: a seroprevalence and modelling study. Lancet Infectious Diseases. 2025. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(25)00590-0
Nikolay B, Salje H, Hossain MJ, Khan AKMD, Sazzad HMS, Rahman M, Daszak P, Ströher U, Pulliam JRC, Kilpatrick AM, Nichol ST, Klena JD, Sultana S, Afroj S, Luby SP, Cauchemez S†, Gurley ES†. Transmission of Nipah virus: 14 years of investigations in Bangladesh. †Denotes shared senior authorship. New England Journal of Medicine, 2019 May: 380(19): 1804-1814.