William Foege, M.D., serves as senior adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 1997, Dr. Foege joined the faculty of Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. In the 1960s, while working as an epidemiologist in Africa and faced with a critical shortage of vaccines, he came up with a strategy to eradicate smallpox. During his leadership as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from 1977 to 1983, smallpox was eradicated worldwide.