Dr. Woods is a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pathology at Duke University, adjunct associate professor in Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Public Health, and adjunct associate professor in the Emerging Infections Program at the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School. He is Executive Director of the Hubert-Yeargan Center for Global Health, and Associate Director for Applied Genomics in the Duke Center for Applied Genomics & Precision Medicine (CAGPM). Dr. Woods is the Global Health lead for the Duke Tropical Conservation Initiative. Clinically, he is Chief of Infectious Diseases, and hospital epidemiologist for the Durham VA Medical Center. Dr. Woods is board-certified in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and medical microbiology.

Dr. Woods has co-authored over 180 peer-reviewed articles. His research focuses on development of novel diagnostic approaches to infectious disease and potential for interspecies transmission of pathogens. His genomic approach to harnessing the host response for diagnosis of infectious diseases has been called a paradigm shift in the field. He is particularly interested in augmenting medical microbiology capacity in the developing world and epidemiology of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.