Professor Baron Peter Piot

KCMG, FRCP, FMedSci

Professor Peter Piot KCMG 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 (1995-2008).

A clinician and microbiologist by training, he co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, and subsequently led pioneering research on HIV/AIDS, women’s health, and infectious diseases, mostly in Africa. He has held academic positions at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp; the University of Nairobi; the University of Washington, Seattle; Imperial College London, and the College de France, Paris. He was a Senior Fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and past president of the International AIDS Society. Professor Piot 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 his native 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 (SCOR) Board, London; of the King Baudouin Foundation (KBF) USA, New York; and of the African Health Research Institute (AHRI), Durban, South Africa. He is Vice-Chair of the Global Health Innovation Technology Fund (GHIT), Tokyo, and member of the Board of the Novartis Foundation, Basel; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), and Sentebale. He is a Special Advisor to the President of the European Commission on research and innovation for COVID-19.

In 1995 he was made a Baron by King Albert II of Belgium, and in 2016 was awarded a UK honorary knighthood KCMG, and in 2018 a Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun of Japan. Professor Piot has received numerous awards for his research and service, including the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award (2015), the Robert Koch Gold Medal (2015), the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health (2014), and 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.