Dr. Talan received his medical degree from the University of Illinois Medical College in Chicago. He completed his residencies in Internal and Emergency Medicine and fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and its associated medical centers. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine, and Infectious Diseases.

From 1993 to 2014, Dr. Talan was Chairman of the Olive View-UCLA Department of Emergency Medicine. He is currently faculty of the Department of Emergency Medicine, and Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. He is Professor of Medicine in Residence (Emeritus) at The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Dr. Talan serves on the editorial boards of the Annals of Emergency Medicine and is a reviewer for many journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Talan is considered an authority in the area of acute infections that result in severe morbidity and death. His research focuses on emergency department-based surveillance and epidemiological research of emerging infections and clinical investigations of acute infectious diseases. He has investigated skin and soft tissue infections, animal and human bites, rabies, tetanus, pneumonia, pyelonephritis, meningitis, appendicitis, and sepsis.

Dr. Talan has several publications in the New England Journal of Medicine JAMA. He edited and authored the Infectious Diseases Clinics of North America edition on infectious disease emergencies. He is principal investigator (PI) of a CDC-supported emergency department-based national sentinel network for research on emerging infectious diseases in the United States called EMERGEncy ID NET, which was established in 1995 and is recognized for discovering the emergence of community-associated MRSA. He was PI of an NIH contract to study off-patent antibiotics to treat skin and soft tissue infections caused by community-associated MRSA called STOP MRSA. This project resulted in studies evaluated the efficacy of adjunctive antibiotics for drained skin abscesses and the need to treat for MRSA infection in patients with cellulitis. EMERGEncy ID NET reported on the prevalence of and risk factors for extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) producing E. coli infections among patients from U.S. communities with acute pyelonephritis. Dr. Talan was co-PI of an NIH R21 pilot study and current co-PI of a PCORI-funded multi-center trial to study non-operative management of acute uncomplicated appendicitis. Dr. Talan has been invited to lecture nationally and internationally on infectious disease emergencies and emergency department surveillance and research.