2 University of Minnesota doctors named among TIME’s 100 most influential people in health
Dr. Michael Osterholm and Dr. Emil Lou, faculty members with the University of Minnesota, have been recognized by TIME as two of the 100 most influential people in health in 2026.
TIME says its list is made up of scientists, doctors, advocates, educators and policymakers who are “changing the health of the world,” and was created by a team of health correspondents and editors who spent months “consulting sources and experts around the globe.”
Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the college. University officials said he’s spent more than 50 years shaping public health policy and practice and has previously served as the state’s epidemiologist.
The media organization said Osterholm is an “outspoken critic” of recent changes in the U.S. government’s vaccination policies. Federal health officials in December voted to change the recommendation for childhood hepatitis B vaccines despite warnings from medical experts.
“It is, for the first time, we can no longer count on our federal agencies to provide us scientifically sound information,” Osterholm told CBS News in response to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel’s vote.
Osterholm last spring launched the Vaccine Integrity Project at the university. The initiative aims to provide “trusted, science-based information for informed vaccine choices,” according to its website.
Lou is a tenured professor, physician-scientist and board-certified gastrointestinal oncologist with the university’s medical school, Masonic Cancer Center and M Health Fairview. TIME credits him and Minnesota resident Emma Dimery with a “pioneering immounotherapy cancer treatment.”
Dimery was diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer when she was 23 years old, according to TIME. In 2022, Lou asked her to participate in a trial that involved extracting cells from a tumor she had.
Lou and his colleagues used gene editing to make the cells resistant to how her cancer hid from her immune system, then injected them back into her body, TIME said. Her cancer was gone within months.
U of M President Rebecca Cunningham said in a written statement that both Osterholm and Lou have “championed groundbreaking work in public health and medicine” and is proud of their commitment to educating the next generation of health professionals.
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