Professor Yasmine Belkaid is a renowned scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between microbes and the immune system. Her varied scientific career, which began at the Institut Pasteur with a PhD in Immunology, has covered fields including parasitology, microbiology, medical entomology, virology, tissue immunity, microbiome and human immunology.
Before taking office as President of the Institut Pasteur, she was Director of the The National Institutes of Health Center for Human Immunology in the United States, where she also founded and directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Microbiome Program. She established the Department of Host Immunity and Microbiome at the NIAID in Bethesda, Maryland, United States.
Commenting on the appointment, Yves Saint-Geours, Chairman of the Institut Pasteur’s Board of Governors, stated: “With her scientific, medical and public health expertise, Yasmine Belkaid has the potential to lead innovative programs that will expand the Institut Pasteur’s international influence, capitalizing on its legacy, its interdisciplinary collaborations and its capacity to train future generations of scientists. This action is of particular importance in our highly competitive environment which presents so many global and multiscale challenges to the Institut Pasteur today.”
Professor Belkaid set out her ambitions as the new President, stating:
I am very proud and happy to be taking over as President of the Institut Pasteur today. I have great respect for Professor Stewart Cole, my predecessor, for his scientific career and his exemplary work leading the Institut Pasteur over the past six years. I would like to thank the staff of the Institut Pasteur for welcoming me to their wonderful institution and I am looking forward to working with them. I know that I can count on a wealth of wide-ranging talent and freedom of thought, both of which characterize the identity of the Institut Pasteur. As I take office, I am determined to defend French and European scientific research in view of the existential challenges it is currently facing. I will engage directly with the members of the Pasteur Network in a spirit of dialog and mutual respect to gain a clear understanding of today’s global health issues. And I will do my utmost to instill in the next generation of scientists an enthusiasm and passion for science.
