Laura Polakowski MD MSPH

Summary

• Dr. Laura Polakowski is a preventive medicine and pediatrics specialist based in Rockville, MD, with board certification in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine and General Pediatrics. She completed her medical education at the Medical College of Wisconsin, followed by a residency in Pediatrics, after which she practiced in primary and urgent care pediatrics for 7 years. She completed a second residency in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine and earned an MSPH degree at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 2005, and began work with the U.S. Public Health Service in 2007. She has worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health in the Washington, D.C. Metro area since 2007, with a primary focus on vaccine safety. She currently works in HIV vaccine clinical research at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Rockville, MD, and was also involved in the conduct of the Moderna mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine clinical efficacy trial that led to its emergency use authorization in 2020. Dr. Polakowski's work has been published in prominent journals including Plos Medicine and The New England Journal of Medicine, with significant citation counts. She was recognized as a Graduate of Distinction from William Horlick High School (Racine, WI) in 2022.