Philippe Duclos

Former Director of ADVAC

University of Geneva
Switzerland

Philippe Duclos holds a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and a PhD from the Claude Bernard University, Lyon, France. He started his career as Associate Professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Zoonotic Diseases at the Veterinary School in Lyon. In 1986, he moved to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying ways to mitigate the impact of disasters. For the last 30 years, his work focused on immunization. He worked for the Canadian Federal Government, at the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, then in charge of the Division of Immunization. He initiated the active paediatric surveillance network based in paediatric hospitals (IMPACT) and the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program.

In 1998 he joined the World Health Organization. First leading the Immunization Safety Priority Project, he established the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety and was at the inception of the Brighton Collaboration. Between 2005 and 2017 he then served as Executive Secretary for the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on immunization and was in charge of the development of global immunization policy recommendations and the production of the WHO vaccine position papers.

In 2017 after he retired from WHO he joined the University of Geneva and served as Director of ADVAC until March 2023. He held an adjunct professorship in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa until 1 September 2017. He is the author or co-author of over 250 publications and hundreds of invited presentations at international conferences