Hotez Microbiology; tropical medicine;global medical diplomacy; medical humanities; vaccines as agents of human conflict resolution and diplomacy; development of a vaccine for human hookworm infection

Peter Hotez M.D., Ph.D

Peter Hotez is Distinguished Research Professor and the Walter G. Ross Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine and at The George Washington University, where his major research and academic interest is in the area of vaccine development for neglected tropical diseases and their control. Prof. Hotez is also the President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a non-profit medical research and advocacy organization. Through the Institute, Dr. Hotez founded the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative, a product development partnership supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop a recombinant vaccine for human hookworm disease, and he also helped to co-found the Global Network for Tropical Neglected Diseases Control, a new partnership formed to facilitate the control of neglected tropical diseases in developing countries. He is also the Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Tropical Neglected Diseases.

Dr. Hotez is the recipient of the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal from the American Society for Parasitologists, the Bailey Ashford Medal of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and the Leverhulme Medal of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. In 2008, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. In addition, Dr. Hotez is an Ambassador of the Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (FAAP), and a member of the WHO Scientific and Technical Advisory Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is the author of over 250 articles, including both technical and papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Science, PLoS Medicine, Washington Post, and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of several books including Forgotten People and Forgotten Diseases, the Neglected Tropical Diseases and their impact on Global Health and Development, published by the American Society for Microbiology.

Dr. Hotez is a native of Hartford, Connecticut. He obtained his B.A. degree in Molecular Biophysics Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University (1980) and his M.D. and Ph.D. from the medical scientist-training program at Weill Cornell Medical College and The Rockefeller University. After completing his residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Hotez returned to Yale University where he was on the faculty for 12 years, before joining GWU in 2000.