Peter Piot, MD, PhD is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and Professor of Global Health.  He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General 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.

Professor Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, and led research on AIDS, women’s health, and public health in Africa. He was a professor of microbiology, public health and global health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, the University of Nairobi, and Imperial College London, was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington, a Scholar in Residence at the Ford Foundation, a Senior Fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and held the chair “Knowledge against poverty” at the College de France in Paris. 

He is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine, of the Académie Nationale de Médicine of France, and of the Royal Academy of Medicine of his native Belgium, and a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK, and the Royal College of Physicians.  He was President of the International AIDS Society in 1991-1994.  In 2008-11, he was the President of the King Baudouin Foundation and was knighted as a baron in 1995 in Belgium.  He has published over 580 scientific articles and 16 books, including his memoir “No Time to Lose”.  He was the recipient of the Calderone Prize, the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research, the Prince Mahidol Award, the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, and the Robert Koch Gold Medal.