Misplaced Pages

#846153

22-630: Professor Peter Piot , director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was presented the award in 2017. While in Edinburgh to receive the award, Prof Piot delivered an address that discussed epidemics in a global context and focused on obesity. In 2016, Edinburgh’s Lord Provost presented the award to Kevin Govender and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The award

44-611: A PhD degree in clinical microbiology from the University of Antwerp . In 1976, while working at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, 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 . Piot and his colleagues subsequently traveled to Zaire as part of an International Commission set up by the Government of Zaire to help quell

66-571: A Silver Community Award for Oxford Road on BBC Radio Berkshire, as well the British Writers' Guild award for best dramatisation for his 1996 adaptation of The Tin Drum by Günter Grass . He was also part of the writing team for BBC Radio 4 's The Dark House , which won a BAFTA Interactive Award . He won the 2012 Bronze Sony Radio Academy Award for Best Drama with A Tale of Two Cities . His plays include: His adaptations include: It

88-619: A construction company. Piot is the oldest of two brothers and a sister. After studying physics in the School of Engineering and Physics at Ghent University , Piot changed to medicine. During medical school, Piot received a Diploma in Tropical Medicine (DTM) from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in Antwerp. In 1974, he received an MD degree from Ghent University. In 1980, Piot received

110-758: A five-point scale for outbreaks, rather the current binary (emergency/no emergency) system. In 2020, Piot was appointed to the European Commission ’s advisory panel on COVID-19 , co-chaired by Ursula von der Leyen and Stella Kyriakides . In the preparations for the Global Health Summit hosted by the European Commission and the G20 in May 2021, Piot co-chaired the event's High-Level Scientific Panel. In May 2020, Piot disclosed that he had had COVID-19 . Piot

132-519: A pioneering researcher into AIDS. He has held key positions in the United Nations and World Health Organization involving AIDS research and management. He has also served as a professor at several universities worldwide. He is the author of 16 books and over 600 scientific articles. Piot was born in Leuven , Belgium. His father was a civil servant who worked with agricultural exports, and his mother ran

154-407: A production by David Morley . Piot narrated the programme. 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. The samples were once claimed to be originally sent by Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum , a Congolese doctor who obtained

176-707: A senior fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle, a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation , and a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation . From 1991 to 1994, Piot was president of the International AIDS Society . In 1992, he became assistant director of the World Health Organization 's Global Programme on HIV/AIDS. On 12 December 1994, he was appointed executive director of

198-525: Is fluent in English, French, and Dutch. He is married to the American anthropologist Heidi Larson . Mike Walker (radio dramatist) Mike Walker is a radio dramatist and feature and documentary writer. His radio work includes both original plays and adaptations of novels, classical and modern. He has won Sony Radio Awards for his play Alpha (2001) and for his script for Different States (1991), and

220-562: Is set in the volatile years of the Kennedy administration, when civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. and the war against the American Mafia were high on the Kennedy agenda. Mike Walker's dramatisation re-discovers the novel and its unnamed and defiantly non-establishment narrator as his new job in the intelligence service ensnares him in a plot to brainwash scientists and trade them across

242-670: Is widely acknowledged as having provided the foundations of science's understanding of HIV infection in Africa. He 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 . He was also

SECTION 10

#1732872366847

264-544: The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations. From 2009 to 2010, Piot served as director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London . In October 2010, Piot became the director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine . In addition to his work at LSHTM, Piot is a member of the Institute of Medicine of

286-937: The National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London , UK and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences . In 2011, Amy Gutmann appointed him to serve on the International Research Panel at the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues . In 2014, in the face of an unprecedented Ebola epidemic in western Africa , Piot and other scientists called for

308-681: The 2014 Edinburgh Medal in recognition of her two decades of research on sustainable production and utilization of leafy African indigenous vegetables to tackle malnutrition and obesity as well as empower rural communities in Kenya. In 2013, the 25th anniversary of the Edinburgh Medal and the Edinburgh International Science Festival, the Medal was awarded jointly for the first time in its history to Professor Peter Higgs and CERN . It

330-468: The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine into the national and international response to the epidemic, which sharply criticised the response of the WHO and put forward ten recommendations for the body's reorganisation. In February 2020, he criticised the delay in declaring the 2019–20 novel coronavirus outbreak focused on Hubei , China, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern , and advocated

352-522: The blood samples from those sickened with a mysterious disease in then-Zaire, later discovered to be Ebola. In 2012, 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. In a 2016 Journal of Infectious Disease article, co-signed by most of the actors from that first outbreak, including Peter Piot and Jean-Jacques Muyembe,

374-548: The claims by both Piot and Muyembe to have played a significant role in the early discovery of Ebola have been refuted. Piot stated in 2019 that "my book was not an attempt to write the history of Ebola, but more my personal experience". In the 1980s, Piot participated in collaborative projects in Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zaire. Project SIDA in Kinshasa, Zaire was the first international project on AIDS in Africa and

396-490: The emergency release of the experimental ZMapp vaccine for use on humans before it had undergone clinical testing on humans. That year, he was appointed by Director General Margaret Chan to the World Health Organization 's Advisory Group on the Ebola Virus Disease Response, co-chaired by Sam Zaramba and David L. Heymann . He also chaired an independent panel convened by Harvard Global Health Institute and

418-649: The outbreak. The International Commission made key discoveries into how the virus spread, and traveled from village to village, spreading information and putting the ill and those who had come into contact with them into quarantine. The epidemic was already waning when the International Commission arrived, thanks to measures taken by local and national authorities, and it finally stopped in three months, after it had killed almost 300 people. The events were dramatised by Mike Walker on BBC Radio 4 in December 2014 in

440-469: The quality of life of people and wildlife to enable them to coexist in and around protected areas in Africa. Peter Piot Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot (born 17 February 1949) is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS . After helping discover the Ebola virus in 1976 and leading efforts to contain the first-ever recorded Ebola epidemic that same year, Piot became

462-667: Was presented in a ceremony at Edinburgh’s Signet Library to Professor Higgs and Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN who collected the medal on behalf of the institution. US climate change scientist Dr James Hansen received the award in 2012. In 2011 the Edinburgh Medal was awarded to Professor Carl Djerassi , an American Scientist who invented the contraceptive pill. In 2022, Uganda's first wildlife veterinarian, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka and Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health and Gorilla Conservation Coffee received this year’s Edinburgh Medal award for her community-led wildlife conservation work, improving

SECTION 20

#1732872366847

484-523: Was presented in recognition of the creation and practical establishment of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Development, which integrates the pursuit of scientific knowledge with social development for and with those most in need. Philosopher Mary Midgley was awarded the Edinburgh Medal at the 2015 Edinburgh International Science Festival. Prof Mary Abukutsa-Onyango , professor of horticulture at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology received

#846153