Professor Keith Klugman

Professor Keith Klugman is the Director of the Pneumonia, Meningitis, Neonatal Sepsis and Antimicrobial Resistance Programs at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle WA. He is the Emeritus William H. Foege Chair of Global Health at the Hubert Department of Global Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, he serves as an Honorary Professor in the Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Professor Klugman is a past president of the International Society of Infectious Diseases; and a past chair of the International Board of the American Society for Microbiology. In 2015 Keith was elected to membership of the US National Academy of Medicine. He has chaired or served on numerous expert committees for the World Health Organization (WHO), the Welcome Trust and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He currently serves as an editor or member of the editorial advisory board of the journals Clinical Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases and MBio.

Professor Klugman has made his major contributions in the field of pneumococcal research, including antimicrobial resistance. His work demonstrating pneumococcal conjugate vaccine efficacy in the developing world, has led to interventions that continue to save millions of lives especially in Africa and in Asia. He has published more than 650 scientific papers which have been cited more than 44,000 times to date. During the covid pandemic he has kept the staff of the Gates Foundation up to
date of developments with weekly or biweekly one hour zoom calls open to all the staff. His current position allows him the opportunity to contribute to the mission of the Gates Foundation to reduce deaths from pneumonia (including covid), neonatal
sepsis and meningitis in children, thus allowing them the chance to lead healthy and productive lives.