HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) leadership congratulates Dr. Sten Vermund on his appointment as president of the Global Virus Network (GVN). Dr. Vermund is the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health, former Dean of the Yale School of Public Health (2017-2022), and serves as a professor in pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. He served as the principal investigator of the HPTN from 2006-2012 and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
"We are delighted to welcome Dr. Vermund as the new GVN president," said Dr. Myron Cohen, HPTN principal investigator and director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. "His exceptional leadership skills, strategic insights, and knowledge make him the perfect choice to lead the GVN."
Dr. Vermund's research has mainly focused on healthcare access, adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, and prevention of HIV transmission among general and key populations, including mother-to-child. Dr. Vermund became increasingly engaged in health policy, mainly related to the sustainability of HIV/AIDS programs and their expansion to non-communicable diseases, the coronavirus pandemic response and prevention, and public health workforce development.
"With his depth of experience as a researcher, educator, and scholar, Dr. Vermund is the perfect leader to advance the GVN's mission to strengthen medical research and response to current viral causes of human disease," said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, HPTN principal investigator, director of ICAP, and professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University in New York.
The GVN is a coalition comprised of human and animal virologists from 71 centers of excellence and nine affiliates in 40 countries, working collaboratively to train the next generation, advance knowledge about how to identify and diagnose pandemic viruses, mitigate and control how such viruses spread and make us sick, as well as develop drugs, vaccines, and treatments to combat them.