DEMETRE C. DASKALAKIS, M.D. born on this date (approximate) is an American infectious disease physician and gay health activist who served as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) from 2022 to 2025 and was previously the director of the Division of HIV Prevention in the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. During the administration of Joe Biden, he was appointed deputy coordinator of the White House’s mpox response to the 2022–2023 outbreak of the disease.
Daskalakis was born in Washington, D.C. to Greek parents and raised in Arlington, Virginia. He studied at Columbia University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1995. He recalls becoming interested in AIDS during his senior year at Columbia University, when he was given the task to fly the AIDS Memorial Quilt as part of a student campaign to raise awareness of AIDS.
He then received his medical degree from the NYU School of Medicine and completed post-graduate medical training at Harvard Medical School in 2003. He completed his residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2003. He completed a Clinical Infectious Disease fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital’s combined program. Daskalakis earned board certification in Internal Medicine in 2002, and became board certified in Infectious Disease in 2005. In 2012, he earned a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Daskalakis worked at Mount Sinai Hospital in Brooklyn, where at one time he held the position of medical director of ambulatory HIV services. He was also an assistant professor at New York University. His work with the “Men’s Sexual Health Project”, which he founded in 2006, involved working in sex clubs and bathhouses to test men for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and direct them to care.
Daskalakis joined the New York City Department of Health in 2013. During a 2012-2013 meningitis outbreak in the city, Daskalakis opened a pop-up clinic as part of a vaccination campaign targeting at-risk groups, such as men who had sex with men, and was credited with halting it. By 2014, he was deputy commissioner for the Division of Disease Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Daskalakis was a member of governor Andrew Cuomo’s Ending the Epidemic Task Force, an effort to decrease HIV transmission rates in New York City. Since joining the city’s health department, he has promoted the concept of “status-neutral care”, a strategy for HIV treatment and prevention which takes the same approach to initial patient care regardless of the patient’s HIV status. The concept was part of the plan for the Ending the Epidemic campaign.
Starting on December 2020, he served as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention in the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, later renamed the Division of HIV Prevention in October 2021. In August 2022, President Joe Biden appointed him as the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator to respond to the 2022–2023 outbreak of the disease.
Daskalakis was subsequently appointed as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). During the second Trump administration, his office’s windows were pierced by bullets in the 2025 shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters, though he was not inside his office at the time. In August 2025, Following news of CDC director Susan Monarez’s ouster by the Trump administration, Daskalakis resigned alongside at least three other CDC senior officials.
Daskalakis is out gay. He met his husband Michael Macneal at Macneal’s gym, Monster Cycle.
Daskalakis attended a Greek Orthodox church in Washington, D.C. growing up. He has explained that the large tattoo of Jesus on his stomach is inspired by the church. Following his White House appointment in 2022, right-wing figures and media have made baseless accusations that Daskalakis is a Satanist due to his clothing and tattoos, including a pentagram tattoo, which he has explicitly denied.