Altaf Lal, Ph.D., MSc
CEO, MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories

Altaf Lal, Ph.D., MSc, is Chief Executive Officer of the MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories, a new enterprise with a not-for-profit mission that will develop affordable vaccines for diseases common in developing countries. 

Dr. Lal has a long and distinguished career focused on vaccine and immunology research and global health policy. As the Chief of the Molecular Vaccine Section in the Division of Parasitic Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Lal’s work concentrated on the development and evaluation of candidate multivalent and multistage malaria vaccines, the molecular evolution and genetic diversity of malaria parasite candidate vaccine antigen genes at a global level, the role of human-usable adjuvants in eliciting protective and sterile immunity, pathogenesis and correlates of protective immunity, the interaction between HIV/AIDS and malaria, and the molecular and evolutionary genetics of enteric parasites.

Dr. Lal joined CDC in 1989 and enjoyed a distinguished career in leadership positions at the agency before being appointed Health Attaché and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Regional Representative for South Asia at the Embassy of the United States of America, New Delhi, India in 2003, a position which he held for six years.

As HHS’s Health Attaché  in India Dr. Lal provided policy support, technical advice,  and oversight of U.S. agency programs including malaria, the expanded program on immunization, vaccine development and evaluation, low-cost health technologies, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, environmental and occupational health, and integrated disease surveillance. Dr. Lal managed key partnerships with the academic, technical, regulatory, and policy leaders in science and technology, and health.  Throughout his career, Dr. Lal leveraged resources by establishing funding and/or technical partnerships with the pharmaceutical and vaccine industry, academic institutions, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. National Vaccine Program Office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare honored Dr. Lal with an award for the establishment of the Public Health Foundation of India and he received an HIV/AIDS Ambassadorship award from the University of Hyderabad for promoting Indo-U.S. collaborations in the area of HIV/AIDS.  The National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare honored him with an award of Friends of National Institute of Communicable Diseases and Public Health Ambassador.

Dr. Lal graduated in 1973 with Honors in Botany from Kashmir University, Jammu and Kashmir, India. He completed postgraduate studies in Biochemistry in 1976 from Lucknow University and conducted his Ph.D. work from 1976-1980 at the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. National Institutes of Health on protein-protein interactions and malaria. In 1989, his interest in infectious diseases and international health took  him to the CDC.

The new research institute is named in honor of the pioneering vaccine scientist Maurice Hilleman, Ph.D., who is credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives through the development of more than 30 vaccines.  Dr. Lal’s contributions to the vaccine field and his tireless commitment to improving global health strongly reflect both the passion of Dr. Maurice Hilleman and the mission of the MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories.