Peter Piot is Director and Professor of Global Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Previously, Dr. Piot was Director of the Institute for Global Health at the Imperial College for Science, Technology and Medicine, London. He was founding Executive Director of UNAIDS, UN Under Secretary-General from 1995 until 2008, and an Associate Director of the WHO Global Programme on AIDS. Under his leadership, UNAIDS became the chief advocate for worldwide action against AIDS. He also spearheaded UN reform by bringing together ten UN system organizations.

Dr. Piot has a medical degree from the University of Ghent (1974) and a PhD in microbiology from the University of Antwerp (1980). In 1976 he co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire while working for the Institute of Tropical Medicine of Antwerp, Belgium. Dr. Piot has held professorships in microbiology and public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, the Free University of Brussels, and the University of Nairobi. He was also a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington, a Scholar in Residence at the Ford Foundation, and a Senior Fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Piot held the 2009-10 "Knowledge against Poverty" Chair at the College de France in Paris, and is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Dr. Piot is an elected Foreign Member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; an elected Member of both the Académie Nationale de Médicine of France and the Royal Academy of Medicine of his native Belgium; and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He is also President of the King Baudouin Foundation, was knighted as a baron in 1995, and has published over 500 scientific articles and 16 books.