Headshot of Peter Hotez

Peter J. Hotez

Fellow in Disease and Poverty

Biography

Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. is the Baker Institute fellow in disease and poverty. He is the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also the co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. He is also a university professor at Baylor University, senior fellow at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, faculty fellow with the Hagler Institute for Advanced Studies at Texas A&M University, and a health policy scholar in the Baylor Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

Dr. Hotez is an internationally recognized physician-scientist in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. Dr. Hotez served previously as president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; he is founding editor-in-chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2014–16, he served in the Obama administration as U.S. Envoy, focusing on vaccine diplomacy initiatives between the U.S. government and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

He has authored more than 600 original papers and is the author of five single-author books, including “Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases” (ASM Press); “Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor amid Wealth”; “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism”; and “Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science” (Johns Hopkins University Press). He obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1980 (Phi Beta Kappa), followed by a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Rockefeller University in 1986, and an M.D. from Weil Cornell Medical College in 1987.

Contact at hotez@bcm.edu or 713-798-1199.