Wellcome Trust appoints director

Jeremy Farrar, professor of tropical medicine and global health at the University of Oxford, has been appointed director of the Wellcome Trust.

Farrar, who is also director of the Wellcome Trust’s Major Overseas Programme in Vietnam, takes up the role on 1 October. He replaces Mark Walport, who became the government’s chief scientific adviser in February.

Farrar’s research has focused on infectious diseases and tropical health, infections of the central nervous system, influenza, tuberculosis, dengue, typhoid and malaria. He has been the director of Oxford’s Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, which is supported by the Wellcome Trust and Vietnam’s government, since 1996 and serves on several advisory committees of the World Health Organization.