Prof. Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum

Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe is the Director General of the National Institute for Biomedical Research of the DRC in Kinshasa, the Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Kinshasa and the first President of the Congolese Academy of Sciences-ACCOS. He has received several honorary distinctions for his scientific work. He is the winner of the 2015 Christophe Mérieux Prize and the 2019 Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize. Recently, he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Harvard and the University of Montpellier (France). He is a Congolese virologist who leads public health emergency responses to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is best known for his seminal work on Ebola virus disease, which laid the foundation for our understanding of the epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and response strategies of Ebola outbreaks. He is a globally recognized leader in the fight against Ebola and is a key figure in the World Health Organization's efforts to combat infectious diseases. He is a co-discoverer of the Ebola virus in 1976 and co-inventor of the monoclonal antibody "mAb114", approved by the FDA as a treatment for Ebola under the name "Ebanga" in December 2020.