David Lonsway, M.Med.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
David Lonsway, M.Med., has had a long and distinguished career in both clinical and public health microbiology and has authored or co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles in this arena. Lonsway obtained a degree in medical technology from Bowling Green State University in 1977. He moved to Atlanta and began working in the Grady Memorial Hospital microbiology laboratory while attending Emory University. In 1981, he obtained a master’s degree in medical science. For the next 16 years, Lonsway was the assistant supervisor of Grady’s microbiology lab, with a special focus on antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). In 1998, he became the supervisor of the combined microbiology and immunology laboratory.
In 2003, after 25 years, Lonsway retired from Grady and began working as a microbiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Antimicrobial Resistance and Characterization Laboratory. Lonsway worked closely with the Clinical & Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI), including development of AST guidelines for M100 and M45, and served on CLSI’s Quality Control subcommittee.
At the CDC, Lonsway is consulted daily for his diagnostic expertise in antimicrobial resistance. He has been a substantial contributor to the development of the CDC and FDA Antimicrobial Resistance Isolate Bank and the Antimicrobial Resistance Lab Network. Lonsway has also participated in several high-visibility CDC responses, including the 2014 Ebola and 2015 Zika virus outbreaks and the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.