IVI Director General Christian Loucq, MD announced that Dr. Alejandro Cravioto will join IVI as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) effective October 15, 2012. As CSO, Dr. Cravioto will “assume responsibility for the oversight of all scientific affairs at IVI and will provide expert advice on matters relevant to vaccine science and technology, potential opportunities, and emerging orientations and trends in the field of vaccine research.” IVI noted that Dr. Cravioto brings a breadth of experience that will be critical for the further development of IVI.  For the past 7 years, he was the Deputy Director and Executive Director of ICDDR,B in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2011, he was appointed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to head a panel investigating the cholera outbreak in Haiti. Dr. Cravioto is a Mexican National who obtained his MD at the Faculty of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He trained as  a Pediatrician (National Institute of Pediatric, Mexico City) and received a Diploma in Tropical Public Health and a Ph.D. at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. While in Mexico Dr. Cravioto served as Head of the Research Department and Deputy Director of the National Institute of Health and Technology for Child Health. He later became Director of the Division of Microbiology at the National Institute of Public Health of Cuernavaca and Professor and Chair of the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico before being appointed as the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 1995 to 2003.

[IVI email announcement, 27 September 2012]