Peter Piot

He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. He co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, and led pioneering research on HIV, women’s health and infectious diseases. He is trained in Belgium at the University of Ghent (MD) and the Institute of Tropical Medicine/University of Antwerp (PhD), and has held positions at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, the Universities of Washington and Seattle, the University of Nairobi, Imperial College London, the College de France, and the Gates Foundation.

He is a member of the Belgian, American, British, and French National Academies of Medicine, and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Institut Pasteur de Dakar, Vice-Chair of GHIT Fund, Tokyo, and was a founding Board Member of CEPI, and of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, Malaria.

In 1995 he was made a Baron in his native Belgium, and in 2016 received a UK Knighthood. His awards include the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award , Robert Koch Gold Medal , Prince Mahidol Award, Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize, and Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, and was a 2014 TIME Person of the Year. He has published over 600 scientific articles and 16 books, including his memoir, No Time to Lose, available in 5 languages.