Dr. Russell Barbour holds a doctorate from Yale's School of the Environment and has worked in the intersection of environmental issues and infectious disease. He has worked in 22 African countries and is on the faculty of Yale's African Studies graduate program. His primary academic appointment is in Biostatistics at Yale School of Medicine/Public Health.

From 2006 to 2020, he was associate director for Statistics and Data Management at the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Aids (CIRA). A former member of the U.S. Foreign Service, he has held diplomatic appoints to Haiti and Madagascar.