23 Facts About Moncef Slaoui

Moncef Mohamed Slaoui is a Moroccan-born Belgian-American researcher who served as the head of Operation Warp Speed under President Donald Trump from 2020 to 2021.

Moncef Slaoui worked at the company for thirty years, retiring in 2017.

On May 15,2020, President Donald Trump announced that Moncef Slaoui would manage the US government's development of a vaccine used to treat coronavirus disease in OPWASP; Moncef Slaoui resigned on January 12,2021 after successfully having helped introduce a number of vaccines to the US and global markets.

Moncef Slaoui was born on July 22,1959, in Agadir, Morocco.

The city was evacuated in February 1960 after an earthquake, and Moncef Slaoui was raised in Casablanca.

Moncef Slaoui's father worked in the irrigation business and died when Slaoui was a teenager, leaving his mother to raise him and his four siblings.

In 1976 at age 17, Moncef Slaoui left Morocco to study medicine in France but missed the registration deadline due to new registration procedures and his mother being ill.

Moncef Slaoui enrolled at the Universite libre de Bruxelles, where he received a BS and MS in biology.

In 1983, Moncef Slaoui earned a PhD in molecular biology and immunology from the Free University of Brussels.

Moncef Slaoui's thesis was titled Etude de la diversite et de la selection des repertoires idiotypiques dans le systeme immunitaire.

Moncef Slaoui took postgraduate courses at Harvard Medical School and the Tufts University School of Medicine without earning degrees.

When she was recruited to continue research on influenza at SmithKline-RIT in Belgium, Moncef Slaoui got a job teaching immunology at the University of Mons in Belgium.

In 1988, after consulting for SmithKline-RIT for three years, Moncef Slaoui joined the company as a vaccine researcher.

In 2008, Moncef Slaoui led the $720 million acquisition of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, which folded amidst turmoil in 2013.

Moncef Slaoui spent 27 years researching on a malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, that was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2015 and touted as the first in the world.

Moncef Slaoui faced criticism, particularly from Senator Elizabeth Warren, for continuing to have Moderna stock options worth over $10 million.

On May 18,2020, Moncef Slaoui resigned from the board of manufacturing firm Lonza, which Moderna had partnered with to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

Moncef Slaoui was scheduled to speak at the annual Biotechnology Innovation Organization conference on June 9,2020, but ultimately pulled out, citing his failure to brief Congress beforehand.

On October 9,2020 the Wall Street Journal quoted Moncef Slaoui as saying that the COVID-19 vaccines would be accompanied by a tracking mechanism provided jointly by McKesson, Google and Oracle.

Moncef Slaoui is a citizen of Morocco, Belgium, and the United States.

Moncef Slaoui's other brother, Mohamed, is a specialist in gastroenterology and his older sister, Hadia, is a university professor of French literature in Morocco.

In 2012, Moncef Slaoui was named as one of the "25 most influential people in biopharma today" by FierceBiotech.

Moncef Slaoui was cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2020.