Peter Piot MD PhD is Special Advisor on COVID-19 to the President of the European Commission, EU Chief Scientific Advisor on Epidemics and visiting professor at the Rega Institute, KU Leuven, and the National University of Singapore. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. Peter Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, and led pioneering research on HIV, women’s health and infectious diseases.
He has held positions at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp; the University of Nairobi; Imperial College London; the College de France, and the Gates Foundation. He is a member of the US, UK, Belgian and French National Academies of Medicine, and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Institut Pasteur de Dakar, Vice-Chair of GHIT Fund, Tokyo, and was a founding Board Member of CEPI. He is a member of the Board of the Novartis Foundation. In 1995 he was made a Baron in his native Belgium, and in 2016 received a UK Knighthood. His awards include the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award , Robert Koch Gold Medal , Prince Mahidol Award, Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize , and Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, and was a 2014 TIME Person of the Year. He has published over 600 scientific articles and 16 books, including his memoir, No Time to Lose, available in 5 languages.