Marie-Paule Kieny

28 August 2019

Dr Marie-Paule Kieny is currently Director of Research at Inserm (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale) in Paris, where she assists the President on International Institutional Collaborations.

She is also the Chair of the Board of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi, Geneva, Switzerland) and of the Medicines Patent Pool Foundation (MPPF, Geneva, Switzerland) since July and August 2017 respectively. She is also a member of the Board of the Human Vaccine Project (HVP, New York, USA) and a Non-Executive Independent Director of bioMérieux (Lyon, France).

Until June 2017, Dr Kieny served as the Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation at the World Health Organization. Dr Kieny also directed the WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research from 2001 to 2010. Key successes under her leadership roles at WHO include the development and licensing of new vaccines against bacterial meningitis, addressing global supply of pandemic influenza vaccine especially in developing countries through technology transfer and manufacturing, and vaccines against poverty-related diseases. Such initiatives are continuing priorities of Dr Kieny.

Before joining WHO, Dr Kieny held top research positions in the public and private sectors in France which included Assistant Scientific Director of Transgene S.A. from 1981 to 1988 and Director of Research and Head of the Hepatitis C Virus Molecular Virology Group at the Institute of Virology, (INSERM) from 1999 to 2000.

Dr Kieny received her PhD in Microbiology from the University of Montpelier (1980), where she was also awarded a University Diploma in Economics, and her Diplôme d’Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches from the University of Strasbourg in 1995. She has published over 350 articles and reviews, mainly in the areas of infectious diseases, immunology, vaccinology, and health systems.

Dr Kieny has been awarded the title of Chevalier dans l’Ordre National de la Légion d’honneur (Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honour, France) in 2016, and of Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite, au titre du Ministère de la Recherche (Knight of the National Order of Merit, under the Ministry of Research, France) in 2000. She was the recipient of the International Inserm Prize in 2017, the Génération 2000-Impact Médecin Prize in 1994, and of the Innovation Rhône-Poulenc Prize in 1991.