Marcel Tanner

Professor Marcel Tanner was Director of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) from 1997-2015. He acted as Professor and chair of Epidemiology/Public Health and Medical Parasitology at the Faculties of Science and Medicine of the University of Basel until his retirement in 2017. Tanner chaired the R. Geigy Foundation, the endowment of Swiss TPH, for 25 years until 2022. He played a key role in the development of epidemiology and public health at the Swiss and global level; particularly also novel approaches for R&D of new drugs and vaccines for the elimination of malaria, other poverty-related and neglected tropical diseases. Following retirements, he was President of the Swiss Academies of Sciences and later overall President of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences until 2023. He built and headed the Expert Public Health group of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force until January 2021 and acted as President of the Federal Commission for issues relating to Sexually Transmitted Infections. He still serves as High Level Representative of the European Developing Country Clinical Trial Partnership (EDCTP).

He devoted his professional life to global public health; particularly to develop new drugs and vaccines for the eradication of malaria and other poverty-related diseases and to find new solutions to strengthen health systems in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region.

Besides research the capacity building and North-South partnerships were main interests alongside with the science, as reflected in the development of the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) in Tanzania, the Centre Suisse de Recherche Scientifiques (CSRS) in Côte d’Ivoire as well as his role in the development of public-private, not-for-profit partnerships like MMV, DNDi and FIND.

Given his expertise and experience in global public health, infection biology and immunology, he has been and still is advisor on communicable diseases research and control, and health systems strengthening in various national and international agencies/foundations and in boards / committees, such as e.g. University Hospital Basel, WHO/SAG, Wellcome Trust, DNDi, FIND, INCLEN-Trust, Gebert-Rüf Foundation, Fondation Botnar and EDCTP.