Dr. Anthony Fauci's Next Role: Professor at Georgetown

Dr. Anthony Fauci has a new title to add to his already-lengthy resume: Professor.

Starting July 1, Fauci will serve as Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Medicine’s Department of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. He will also have a role with the McCourt School of Public Policy.

"The rank of University Professor is Georgetown’s highest professional honor that recognizes extraordinary achievement in scholarship, teaching and service," Georgetown University said in a statement.

Fauci, 82, retired in December from his position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases after four decades with the organization, and served as advisor for seven presidents.

During his tenure in public service, Fauci helped guide public policy on HIV/AIDS, SARS, MERS, avian influenza, swine flu, Zika, and Ebola. But it was his involvement with the Covid-19 pandemic that made him a household name, largely due to the political slant of the pandemic response.

“You have a devastating public health challenge in the midst of a very divisive society, in a very hotly-contested political year. You put all of those ingredients together and it's been quite challenging,” he told PEOPLE, branding Covid “the most difficult and devastating infectious disease and respiratory outbreak that we’ve experienced in the last 102 years.”

But it was his guiding force that led to Fauci being named one of PEOPLE's People of the Year in 2020 — an honor the Brooklyn native took in stride.

“I’m a physician. I’m a scientist. And I’m a public health official,” he told PEOPLE at the time. “But you can’t take that stuff seriously and start to think you’re a celebrity. When you start to think that, then you get into trouble.”

That said, he admitted he appreciated Brad Pitt's portrayal of him on Saturday Night Live, adding, “I’m definitely not as good-looking as he is.” 

And now in his new role at Georgetown, Fauci will work with undergraduate and graduate medical students.

“I’m excited about putting together the overlap of medicine and public policy. And developing collaborations at various levels, particularly with students, and I mean all students – I don’t mean just medical students,” he said.

“I’m still quite energetic. I’m still very enthusiastic, and I’m passionate about doing something with the next several years...while I still had, as they say, a lot of gas in my tank and a lot of energy," Fauci said. "I wanted to do something a little bit different outside the confines of the federal government."

“I think what I have to offer is experience and inspiration to the younger generation of students,” he said in a YouTube video put out by the university. “If my main goal is to serve as an inspiration for those younger individuals, then I'll be part of the process of that flow of young people coming in and taking leadership roles.”

Fauci, who holds degrees from two Jesuit institutions — Regis High School in New York City and The College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., which dedicated a science center in his honor — said that Georgetown’s Jesuit foundation appealed to him.

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The Jesuits is the common name for the Society of Jesus — a Roman Catholic order of priests and brothers.

“It was explicit that public service and service to others is what you should do in addition to all the very important characteristics of Jesuit training: integrity, precision of thought, economy of expression, consideration for others, honesty....Holy Cross fortified the same principles that I learned in Regis High School. I was so attracted to those characteristics that I made them a part of me,” Fauci said.

He also has a personal connection to the Washington, D.C., school, having married wife Christine Grady — a Georgetown grad — at the campus’s Dahlgren Chapel. Their three daughters were born at Georgetown Hospital. And, as Fauci says with a laugh, “I live ten blocks away.”

“To come back and spend the next several years at the next chapter in my professional life in a place that just instinctively feels like home is really a good feeling,” he said.