Professor Peter Piot KCMG MD PhD is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and a Handa Professor of Global Health. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations (1995-2008). A clinician and microbiologist by training, he co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, and subsequently led pioneering research on HIV/AIDS, women’s health, and infectious diseases, mostly in Africa. He has held academic positions at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp; the University of Nairobi; the University of Washington, Seattle; Imperial College London, and the College de France, Paris. He was a Senior Fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and past president of the International AIDS Society. In 1995 he was made a Baron by King Albert II of Belgium, and in 2016 was awarded a UK honorary knighthood KCMG, and in 2018 a Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun of Japan. Professor Piot has received numerous awards for his research and service, including the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award (2015), the Robert Koch Gold Medal (2015), the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health (2014), and the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research (2013), the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, (2001), and was named a 2014 TIME Person of the Year (The Ebola Fighters). He has published over 600 scientific articles and 16 books, including his memoir, No Time to Lose, translated into 5 languages.