David Rollinson is the Director of the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance and is delighted to have the opportunity to work with colleagues to grow the Alliance into a meaningful and important platform for the schistosomiasis community to help control and eliminate schistosomiasis. He recently retired as a Merit Researcher at the Natural History Museum in London and as Director of a WHO collaborating centre for schistosomiasis. David has had a long fascination with schistosomes and their intermediate snail hosts and this has involved him in many projects especially in sub-Saharan Africa, most recently, the Zanzibar Elimination of Schistosomiasis Transmission (ZEST) project in Zanzibar. David is on the WHO expert advisory panel of parasitic diseases, the senior editor of Advances in Parasitology and the former President of the World Federation of Parasitologists and British Society of Parasitology. He has published over 340 research articles and has received many honours and awards in recognition of its contribution to the field of Parasitology.