Larry S. Schlesinger, MD is an internationally recognized authority in infectious diseases with a particular interest in tuberculosis and lung biology. He earned a BA in Biology from Cornell University and MD from Rutgers Medical School. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan and clinical and research fellowships in Infectious Diseases at UCLA. He joined the faculty at the University of Iowa in 1991 where he served as Fellowship Director for the Division of Infectious Diseases and Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine. He moved to the Ohio State University in 2002 where he served as Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine until 2011 when he became first chair of Microbial Infection & Immunity. During his tenure he founded the Center for Microbial Interface Biology, a Board of Trustees approved university-wide center with a focus on infectious diseases of concern to public health. In 2017 he became President and CEO of Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, TX. 
Dr. Schlesinger is a leading physician scientist whose studies focus on the pathogenesis of tuberculosis and other airborne infectious agents that subvert lung immune mechanisms. His discoveries have led to greater insight into the unique attributes that soluble and cellular components of the innate immune system of humans bring to the microbe-host interface (with a focus on human macrophages), translating them into drug discovery platforms. He is a prolific scholar, having authored more than 170 peer-reviewed articles, served as editor of 2 books and has written several chapters in leading textbooks on tuberculosis and lung biology. He has been continually funded for nearly 30 years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies as well as private foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
He is a current NIH NIAID Council member, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Association of American Physicians and American Academy of Microbiology, and OSU鈥檚 2011 Distinguished Scholar and 2105 COM Distinguished Professor.