Professor David Heymann

Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at LSHTM and Head of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, London

David Heymann is a medical doctor and epidemiologist, and Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at LSHTM. From 1989 to 2009 he held various leadership positions in infectious diseases at WHO, and in 2003 headed the WHO global response to SARS in his role as executive director of communicable diseases. In 1976, after spending two years working in India on smallpox eradication, he was a member of the CDC (Atlanta) team to investigate the first Ebola outbreak in DRC and stayed on in sub-Saharan Africa for 13 years in various field research positions on Ebola, monkeypox, Lassa Fever, malaria and other tropical diseases after which he was seconded by CDC to WHO. He has published over 275 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, is editor of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, and is an elected member of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine. In 2009 he was named an Honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for services to global health.