
Professor Baron Peter Piot
Director, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Speaker's biography
Professor Peter Piot MD PhD is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a Handa Professor of Global Health. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
A clinician and microbiologist by training, he co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, and subsequently led pioneering research on HIV/AIDS, particularly in Africa. He is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Medicine of France, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, and is a fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of Physicians.
Professor Piot is the Chair of HMG’s Strategic Coherence of ODA-funded Research Board; of the King Baudouin Foundation USA; and of the African Health Research Institute. He is Vice-Chair of the Global Health Innovation Technology Fund, and member of the Board of the Novartis Foundation; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation, and Sentebale. He is a Special Advisor to the President of the European Commission on research and innovation for COVID-19.
He was knighted as a Baron in 1995 in Belgium, awarded an Honorary Knighthood KCMG in 2016, and the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun of Japan (2018). Professor Piot has received numerous awards for his research and service, including the Gairdner Global Health Award (2015), the Robert Koch Gold Medal (2015), the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health (2014), the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research (2013), the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights (2001), and was named a 2014 TIME Person of the Year (The Ebola Fighters). He has published over 600 scientific articles and 16 books, including his memoir, No Time to Lose, translated into 5 languages.