On the Season 4 premiere of Halteres Presents, hosts Mickey Urdea and Rich Thayer are talking all about H5N1 with Dr. Dave Engelthaler, the Director and Professor at TGen North and Executive Director of the Health Observatory at Arizona State University. Dr. Engelthaler returns to the podcast to cover the origins of this strain of avian flu, its devastating effects particularly on dairy farms, what our level of concern for human transmission should be heading into 2026, and even some purr-plexing disease vectors that may be going overlooked. Please enjoy this episode of Halteres Presents.

David Engelthaler is the Director and Professor at TGen North, and is a Director of TGen’s Division of Immunology and Microbial Genomics. TGen North focuses on pathogen genomics with a specific mission to advance clinical medicine, public health, and biodefense. Dave is also co-appointed as the Executive Director of the Health Observatory at ASU. During the recent pandemic, Dave oversaw the rapid development of TGen’s FDA-allowed COVID-19 diagnostic test, the creation of a federally-licensed diagnostic laboratory, and the institution of the AZ COVID sequencing reference laboratory—all in support of Arizona’s public health and healthcare response.

Prior to joining TGen, Dave was the State Epidemiologist for Arizona where he was responsible for coordinating outbreak investigations and disease research activities statewide. From 2000 to 2005, Dave was also the Arizona Biodefense Coordinator, responsible for coordinating all state-wide activities regarding public health emergency preparedness and response, including response activities to suspect biothreat events, such as the suspicious powders that were seen following the anthrax letter attacks. He also served as statewide coordinator for Pandemic Influenza and other public health emergency response activities. Prior to 2000, Dave was a biologist for the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he conducted research on highly infectious diseases like plague and tularemia.

Dave has over 170 peer-reviewed publications, garnering over 10,000 citations and has over two dozen patented inventions. Dave received a Ph.D. in Biology from Northern Arizona University with a focus on genomic epidemiology, and a Master’s Degree in Microbiology from Colorado State University, where he studied host-vector-pathogen dynamics.

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