Annelies Wilder-Smith

Annelies Wilder-Smith is Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and visiting Professor at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Singapore. She also serves as Consultant to the Initiative of Vaccine Research at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, as Focal Point for the SAGE Working Group on COVID-19 vaccines. She is Past President of the International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM), and Editor-in-Chief of ISTM`s Journal of Travel Medicine. Annelies specializes in emerging viral diseases such as Zika, dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, influenza, SARS and now SARS-CoV-2. In 2003, she was at the forefront of the SARS epidemic in Singapore. She is now coordinating a working group at WHO to formulate policy recommendations for the use of COVID-19 vaccines. With a career spanning almost three decades, she has led and co-led various clinical trials, published more than 350 scientific papers, edited and co-edited textbooks and travel medicine books, served on various editorial boards and scientific committees, including as Editorial Consultant to The Lancet. Her awards include the Myrone Levine Vaccinology Prize, the Honor Group Award for exemplary leadership and coordination in determining and communicating global yellow fever risk presented at the CDC Award Ceremony, the Mercator Professorship award by the German Research Foundation and the Ashdown Oration Award by the Australian College of Travel Medicine. She is the Principal Investigator of an EU funded international consortium called “ZikaPLAN” (https://zikaplan.tghn.org/), and recently completed another 4 year research project on dengue, also funded by the European Commission.