Yasmine Belkaid is appointed Director-General of the Pasteur Institute

14 april 2023 Fællesskab

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The Board of directors of the Pasteur Institute in Paris appointed on 29 March Franco-Algerian professor Yasmine Belkaid. She achieved most of her higher studies in France, and she is now appointed Director-General for a six years mandate which will take place in January 2024.

“As the next Director-General, I intend to turn the Pasteur Institute into one of the main research institutes in life science”. This is how the new Director-General of the Pasteur Institute in Paris spoke during her appointment. The Pasteur Institute is a non-profit foundation in relation with the University of Paris Cité which aim is to contribute to the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases through research and education.

A training course and an international career

Born in 1968 in Algier, professor Yasmine Belkaid is a world-renowned researcher, and her reputation is due both to its academic and international career, which work mainly focus on the relation between germs and the immune system.

She first studied biochemistry at the Algerian University of Sciences and Technology Houari-Boumédiène (USTHB). She chose to then extend her studies in France where she passed a DEA degree at the Paris-Sud University. In the wake of passing her degree, she studied in a Doctorate course in immunology at the Paris-Sud University and the Pasteur Institute in 1996, where she studied more broadly “the immunity answers innate to Leishmania infection”.

After her doctorate, Yasmine Belkaid continued her career with a postdoctoral internship in the United States, in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). After holding several positions at different American institutes, she returned to NIAID in 2005 where she created the Department of Host Immunity and Microbiome. She is also today the Director of the Centre for Human Immunology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US agency responsible for medical and biomedical research, as well as the NIAID Microbiome Programme.

An Institute with an international outlook

Deeply rooted in an international vision of research, the Institut Pasteur is developing numerous major international projects in partnership with the world’s leading scientific bodies such as the WHO and many other organisations, foundations, research institutes and universities throughout the world. The appointment of Professor Yasmine Belkaid as Director General of the Institut Pasteur confirms these orientations.

Following this appointment, Yves Saint-Geours, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Pasteur Institute, declared that “thanks to her scientific, medical and public health expertise, Yasmine Belkaid is able to drive innovative programmes that will strengthen the international influence of Institut Pasteur”.