16 Facts About Peter Piot

Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot was born on 17 February 1949 and is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS.

Peter Piot has held key positions in the United Nations and World Health Organization involving AIDS research and management.

Peter Piot has served as a professor at several universities worldwide.

Peter Piot is the author of 16 books and over 600 scientific articles.

Peter Piot's father was a civil servant who worked with agricultural exports, and his mother ran a construction company.

In 1980, Peter Piot received a PhD degree in clinical microbiology from the University of Antwerp.

In 1976, while working at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Peter Piot was part of a team that observed a Marburg-like virus in a sample of blood taken from a sick nun working in Zaire.

Peter Piot has received the majority of the credit for discovering Ebola, since in 1976, it was claimed he was the one to receive blood samples while working in a lab at the Institute for Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium.

In 2012, Peter Piot published a memoir entitled No Time to Lose which chronicles his professional work, including the discovery of the Ebolavirus; he mentions Muyembe in passing rather than as a co-discoverer.

Peter Piot stated in 2019 that "my book was not an attempt to write the history of Ebola, but more my personal experience".

Peter Piot was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, and at the University of Nairobi, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Lausanne, and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

From 1991 to 1994, Peter Piot was president of the International AIDS Society.

From 2009 to 2010, Peter Piot served as director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London.

In 2020, Peter Piot was appointed to the European Commission's advisory panel on COVID-19, co-chaired by Ursula von der Leyen and Stella Kyriakides.

In May 2020, Peter Piot disclosed that he had had COVID-19.

Peter Piot is married to the American anthropologist Heidi Larson.