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Wellcome Leap: Unconventional Projects. Funded at Scale.

Jeremy Farrar

Director Emeritus

Jeremy Farrar

Jeremy was the Director of the Wellcome Trust from 2013-2023 – a politically and financially independent global charitable foundation that exists to improve health by helping big ideas to thrive. He left Wellcome in February 2023 to take on a new role as Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization.

Jeremy is a clinician scientist who before joining Wellcome was, for eighteen years, Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, where his research interests were in infectious diseases and global health with a focus on emerging infections, he has published almost 600 articles. He was named 12th in the Fortune list of 50 World’s Greatest Leaders in 2015 and was awarded the Memorial Medal and Ho Chi Minh City Medal from the Government of Vietnam. In 2018 he was awarded the President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian of the Year Award and in 2019 was knighted for services to global health. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the European Molecular Biology organization, the US National Academies and the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.