Professor Yasmine Belkaid has been appointed Director General of the Institut Pasteur, according to a press release on the Institute’s website. The appointment comes after Professor Belkaid has worked at the Institute as Scientific Director of Immunology and Microbiology since 2015.
Professor Belkaid is a renowned scientist in the fields of immunology and microbiology. She is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous prestigious awards for her research, including the L’Oreal-UNESCO Foundation Award for Women in Science.
As Director General of the Institut Pasteur, Professor Belkaid will be responsible for managing all of the Institute’s activities, including scientific research, training, communication and international collaboration. She will also be responsible for maintaining the Institute’s reputation as a world leader in medical research and public health.
Professor Belkaid said she is honored to take the helm of the Institut Pasteur and to continue the Institute’s mission to fight infectious diseases and improve public health worldwide. She also expressed her gratitude to the members of the Institute for their commitment and dedication to this mission.
Biography of Professor Yasmine Belkaid
Born in Algiers 54 years ago, Yasmine Belkaid holds a master’s degree in biochemistry from the Algerian University of Science and Technology Houari-Boumédiène, as well as a DEA from the University of Paris-Sud. She then obtained a PhD in immunology from the University of Paris-Sud and the Pasteur Institute in 1996, where she studied innate immune responses to Leishmania infection.
After her PhD, she did a postdoctoral fellowship in intracellular parasite biology at the NIAID Parasitic Diseases Laboratory (NIH) in the United States. In 2002, she joined the Department of Molecular Immunology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (Ohio, USA) before returning to NIAID in 2005 to become head of the Mucosal Immunology Unit of the Parasitic Disease Laboratory.
Since 2005, Yasmine Belkaid has held various positions at NIAID and NIH, where she currently leads the Department of Host Immunity and Microbiome since 2021. She has published over 220 scientific papers on various topics such as infection, immunity, immunology, microbiota and nutrition.
Yasmine Belkaid is a recipient of many prestigious awards and honors, such as the Robert Koch Prize in 2021, the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences in 2019, and the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Prize in 2016. She is also a member of several scientific committees and boards, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. She also serves on the Microbiome Technical Advisory Group of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIH Anti-Racism Steering Committee, the American Society of Microbiology, and the Scientific Resource Board of Genentech.
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