Ellen Jo Baron's Biography

Ellen Jo Baron, Executive Director, Medical Affairs, Cepheid

Professor Emerita Baron was Director of the Clinical Microbiology & Virology Laboratories at Stanford University Medical Center for 15 years before joining Cepheid in 2009. She was a board-certified clinical microbiology laboratory director for >30 years, during which she authored or edited a number of textbooks and microbiology laboratory manuals. Her Basic Microbiology Flowchart system is in use in laboratories throughout the world. Dr. Baron was Bacteriology editor for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Manual of Clinical Microbiology for 4 editions and also edited the Infectious Diseases Society of America and ASM Guideline on Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Testing, published online by IDSA and as a Sanford Guide app. She has written or edited >30 books and chapters and >100 journal articles about infectious diseases diagnostics. She received two Stanford teaching awards, a Stanford Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as the ASM’s bioMerieux Sonnenwirth Award for Leadership in Clinical Microbiology, the ASM’s Alice Evans Award for serving as a role model for women in microbiology, and the ASM Founders’ Award in 2012. She has been an invited speaker throughout the world at >100 conferences and symposia. She became the ASM liaison to the PanAmerican Health Organization (PAHO) in 2015. She is co-founder and Secretary of Diagnostic Microbiology Development Program, a non-governmental organization that does laboratory capacity building in the developing world, currently with major activities in Cambodia. She is currently Executive Director of Medical Affairs at Cepheid, a molecular diagnostics company.