Inaugural Lecture

Experiments, Science, and the Fight against Poverty
January 2OO9

Inaugural Lecture (January.7 2010)
L'épidémie du Sida et la mondialisation des risques

Biography

Peter Piot, MD, PhD is Professor of Global Health and Director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College, London, UK. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under-Secretary of the United Nations from 1995 until 2008, and was an Associate Director of the Global Programme on AIDS of WHO.Under his leadership UNAIDS became the chief advocate for worldwide action against AIDS, also spear heading UN reform by bringing together 10 UN system organizations in the global aids response.
Dr. Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, and led research on HIV/AIDS, women’s health, and public health in Africa. He was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, the Free University of Brussels, and the University of Nairobi, was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington, a Scholar in Residence at the Ford Foundation, and a Senior Fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He holds the chair 2009/2010 “Science against poverty” at the College de France in Paris, and is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, and of the Royal Academy of Medicine of his native Belgium, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He is the President of the King Baudouin Foundation, was knighted as a baron in 1995, and published over 500 scientific articles and 16 books.