Dr. Nirav Shah, former head of the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC), will be joining the faculty of Colby College this fall to teach courses on public health, the liberal arts college announced on Thursday.

Shah, who served as head of the Maine CDC from 2019 to 2023 and was Maine’s leading public health authority during the COVID-19 pandemic, left the state to serve as the principal deputy director of the federal CDC in January 2023.

Later that year, he briefly served as the acting director of the U.S. CDC.

Shah had come to Maine after serving as the director of the Illinois Department of Health, where he faced calls for his resignation after the botched containment of an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease that lead to the deaths of several veterans.

At Colby College, Shah will be working as a visiting professor within the college’s Department of Statistics, and will be teaching an introductory level course on public health, an advanced course on epidemics and outbreaks, and a one-month January Program course on crisis communications.

In a Thursday press release, Colby College President David Greene lauded Shah as a “natural teacher” and “one of the world’s leading public health experts.”

“It is Colby’s good fortune that he has decided to join our faculty and help us launch of the top undergraduate public health programs in the nation.”

Shah said on Thursday that he was “over the moon” to land the professorship gig at Colby College.

“This is a fantastic opportunity to train the next generation of public health leaders,” he said. “Colby is well positioned to be a national leader in undergraduate public health education, and I’m honored to help play a role.”