Yasmine Belkaid
Professor Yasmine Belkaid is a renowned scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between microbes, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and the human immune system. Born in Algiers, Algeria in 1968 to an Algerian politician father and a French mother, Professor Belkaid received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry in Algeria. In 1996, she obtained her doctorate in immunology from the University of Paris-Sud and the Institut Pasteur in Paris where she studied innate immune responses to a skin disease spread by infected female sandflies. After coming to the United States for a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), she obtained dual citizenship in the United States. She has taught at several research departments and medical schools in the United States including at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania and has held several different research and leadership positions at the NIAID.
Throughout her career, Dr. Belkaid’s research has focused primarily on microbes, especially those on the skin and in the gastrointestinal tract. She discovered that certain skin microbes contribute to the body’s immune defenses and play an important role in promoting immunity against infection. Dr. Belkaid has published over 220 scientific articles on infection, immunity, immunology and nutrition and has received numerous awards, including the Robert Koch Prize (2021), the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2019), and the Sanolfi-Institut Pasteur Prize (2016). She is a member of several scientific committees and councils, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences and serves on an advisory board to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the National Institute of Health’s Anti-Racism Steering Committee.
In 2024, Dr. Belkaid was appointed to a six-year term as the president of the Institut Pasteur where she hopes to bring her efforts in studying and curing infectious diseases to African countries. Although there are many talented scientists, physicians and researchers in Africa who are committed to improving local public health, they lack resources, equipment, government financing and helpful partnerships with other scientific research networks and pharmaceutical companies. It is Dr. Belkaid’s goal to change this reality during her six-year term at the Pasteur Institut by working closely with the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator program and other local health delivery groups to promote and develop local vaccine production, to strengthen existing health systems, to support research on infectious disease, and to reduce infant mortality.