Dr Larry Brilliant, President of the Skoll Global Threats Fund and former Director of google.org, will talk about the incredible advances we have made in combating infectious disease and how we can apply past successes to future challenges.

His lecture will be followed by a panel discussion with:

• Professor David Heymann, Chair of the Board, Health Protection Agency
• Professor Adrian Hill, Professor of Human Genetics, and Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines, University of Oxford
• Professor Rodney Phillips, Professor of Clinical Medicine, and Co-Director of the Institute for Emerging Infections, University of Oxford

About the speaker:

Dr Larry Brilliant is the President and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund. He heads a team whose mission is to confront global threats imperilling humanity, like pandemics, climate change, water security, nuclear proliferation and the Middle East conflict. Prior to joining Skoll, Larry was Vice President of Google and Executive Director of Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google.

Larry has worked in many different capacities – variously as physician, professor, advisor or consultant – at many levels, from villages to global policy, on smallpox, polio, blindness, disease surveillance and disasters. He is the founder of The Seva Foundation, an international NGO whose programmes have given back sight to more than three million blind people in 20 countries.

He was a senior technical advisor to the movie Contagion, and also conceived the Oscar-nominated documentary “The Final Inch” about polio eradication in India. His recent awards include the “TED Prize”, TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People”, “International Public Health Hero” and two honorary doctorates. Larry is the author of two books and dozens of articles on infectious diseases, epidemiology and global health policy.