Arnaud Didierlaurent

Assistant Professor, ADVAC Executive Director, and Director of the Center of Vaccinology Centre de Vaccinologie

Département de Pathologie et d'Immunologie

Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva Geneva

Switzerland

After training as a biotechnology engineer, a Master's degree from the University of Strasbourg and a year's training in Seattle, Arnaud Didierlaurent joined ISREC in Lausanne and obtained a PhD in cellular immunology from the University of Lausanne in 2003. There, he continued his work on innate immunity, before moving to Imperial College London, where from 2004 to 2007 he worked on the long-term impact of viral infection on the innate lung response. In 2006, having won a Novartis Foundation award, he spent a research period at New York's Rockefeller University, in the laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Prof. Steinmann. He then worked at GlaxoSmithKline in the R&D department on vaccine adjuvants. He was directly involved in the licensure of several vaccines, notably of the recombinant Zoster vaccine. His experience in the industry has given him a solid understanding of the development of vaccines and the implementation of immunization programs.

Appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology and the Center for Vaccinology at Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva in 2020, through a chair of the Giorgi-Cavalieri Foundation, he carries translational research on vaccines and infectious diseases. His research interests focus on deciphering the interactions between innate immunity and the pathogen- and vaccine-specific adaptive response. Since February 2023, he has also been co-director of the Center for Vaccinology together with Christiane Eberhardt and took over the chair in Vaccinology funded by the Fondation Mérieux. He is the chairman of the Technical Advisory Group from WHO which provides recommendations for the Emergency Use listing of vaccine candidates. He is also the executive director of ADVAC and an Associate Professor at the University of Geneva since February 2024.