Arnaud Fontanet is a professor at the Institut Pasteur and the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. As a former junior doctor, a Doctor of Medicine (University of Paris 5) and a Doctor of Public Health (Harvard University), he specialises in the epidemiology of infectious and tropical diseases. Since January 2002, he has led the Emerging Disease Epidemiology Unit at the Institute Pasteur in Paris. The main areas of his research are viral hepatitis and emerging viruses. Arnaud Fontanet is also the director of the Ecole Pasteur-Cnam de Santé Publique and the director of the Institut Pasteur’s Global Health Department. From 2018 to 2019, he held the Chair of Public Health, a role which had recently been created by the Collège de France. In 2020, he became a member of the COVID-19 scientific council to the French government.