Biography
Sir Peter Baron Piot MD PhD is Professor of Global Health and Emeritus Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Senior Advisor at the Gates Foundation, and visiting professor at KU Leuven and the National University of Singapore.
He was Special Advisor to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Health Security, founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. He co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976 and has led research on HIV, women’s health and infectious diseases, mostly in Africa. He received his MD from Ghent University and his PhD from the University of Antwerp, and has worked at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, the University of Washington, the University of Nairobi, Imperial College London and the Collège de France.
Dr Piot is a member of the Belgian, American, British and French Academies of Medicine, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Liberia Academy of Sciences and the International Science Council. He holds and has held a number of international advisory and board roles in global health, health security and biomedical research.
He was made a Baron in Belgium, received a UK Knighthood and the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun of Japan. His scientific and public-health distinctions include the Virchow Prize, Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, Robert Koch Gold Medal, Prince Mahidol Award, Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize, Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights and WHO Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also named a TIME Person of the Year in 2014. He has published more than 650 scientific articles and 17 books, including No Time to Lose.