Hans Hagen

Hans was trained as a parasitologist and medical entomologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, and the University of Tübingen, Germany, where he received his PhD in 1992. During his research career in the field of infectious tropical diseases, he undertook substantial field research on the transmission of river blindness, in mainly Francophone West and Central Africa. Hans has worked in a number of laboratories in Brazil, USA, France, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, and the UK. In 1999, Hans decided to switch careers, and started his new post at the Wellcome Trust, mainly working with science communities outside the UK (India, Central Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America). In 2006, Hans was recruited by the Royal Society, initially as the Senior Manager - International, before being promoted to Head of Grants in 2014. His main task was to develop the Society’s capacity strengthening programme for sub-Saharan Africa. This programme initially focussed on Ghana and Tanzania, resulting in the “Leverhulme - Royal Society Africa Awards” scheme, which was successfully launched in October 2008. This was followed by a more ambitious pan-sub-Saharan Africa programme, “The Royal Society - DFID Africa Capacity Building Initiative”, launched in November 2012, after obtaining substantial funding from the Department for International Development (DFID). In addition, Hans carried out a feasibility study on a possible post-doctoral career development fellowship scheme for African scientists, initially at the behest of DFID. This provided some of the ground work for the Future Leaders - African Independent Research Fellowships (FLAIR), launched with the African Academy of Sciences in 2018. From 2015 to 2017, Hans worked as Chief Operating Officer for Cambridge University Health Partners before joining Institut Pasteur as Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Health and Chargé de Mission at the Department of International Affairs, in October 2017.