Asia Solutions for the Global Mozzie Challenge

Aurélia Nguyen joined CEPI in October 2024 as Deputy CEO. In this role, Aurélia is in charge of shaping and delivering on CEPI’s priorities across the organization.

Prior to joining CEPI, Aurélia spent 13 years at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance – latterly managing all of Gavi’s programmatic work as Chief Programme Officer, with responsibility for design and execution of GAVI’s vaccine programmes. During her tenure at Gavi, Aurélia served as Managing Director of the Office of the COVAX Facility, set up in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier in her career, Aurélia held various posts within GlaxoSmithKline, contributing to the development of GSK’s policies on access to medicines and vaccines in Lower and Middle-Income Countries, and also within WHO, undertaking research on generic medicines policies.

Aurélia has served on a number of boards, including the Polio Oversight Board and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)’s Board of Trustees.

Aurélia is a certified accountant and holds a Master’s degree in Health Policy, Planning & Financing from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics. She received the Medal of Friendship by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in 2023 and was featured in TIME Magazine’s 2021 TIME100 Next list honouring "the 100 individuals who are shaping the future of their fields and defining the next generation of leadership".

Ramanan Laxminarayan is the founder and president of the One Health Trust. He is a senior research scholar at Princeton University. He is an affiliate professor at the University of Washington, senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. Dr. Laxminarayan chairs the board of GARD-P, a global product development partnership created by the World Health Organization, that aims to develop and deliver new treatments for bacterial infections. He is founder and board chair at HealthCubed, which works to improve access to healthcare and diagnostics worldwide.

Since 1995, Dr. Laxminarayan has worked to improve the understanding of antibiotic resistance as a problem of managing a shared global resource. His work encompasses extensive peer-reviewed research, public outreach, and direct engagement across Asia and Africa through the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership. Through his prolific research, active public outreach (including a TED talk that has been viewed over a million times), and sustained policy engagement, he has played a central role in bringing the issue of drug resistance to the attention of leaders and policymakers worldwide and to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016.

During the Obama Administration, Dr. Laxminarayan served on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s antimicrobial resistance working group and was appointed a voting member of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance. He is a series editor of the Disease Control Priorities for Developing Countries, 3rd edition.

In 2003-04, he served on the National Academy of Science/Institute of Medicine Committee on the Economics of Antimalarial Drugs and subsequently helped create the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria, a $450 million novel financing mechanism for antimalarials that reduced the cost of antimalarials worldwide. In 2012, Dr. Laxminarayan created the Immunization Technical Support Unit that supports the immunization program of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of India, which is credited with helping introduce four new vaccines and extending vaccination coverage to 3 million infants. As Vice President, Research and Policy at the Public Health Foundation of India between 2011 and 2015, he led the growth of a research division to over 700 technical and research staff.

Dr. Laxminarayan currently leads the largest Covid-19 epidemiology study in the world based on extensive contact tracing in India. The flagship paper from this study was published in Science in 2020.

Dr. Laxminarayan is a fellow of the American Academy for Advancement of Science and of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was named a distinguished alumnus by the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in 2019, and by the University of Washington Department of Economics in 2020. He is a winner of the Ella Pringle medal by the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh (Pringle was the first-ever woman elected to the RCPE) and the BP Koirala medal in honor of Nepal’s first democratically elected Prime Minister. Dr. Laxminarayan’s work has been widely covered in major media outlets including the the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC, Financial Times, CNN, the Economist, LA Times, NBC, NPR, Reuters, Science, Wall Street Journal, and the National Journal. His research includes over 300 books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed papers in leading journals in science, medicine, and economics.

A medical doctor and infectious disease epidemiologist, Dr Seth Berkley is the Chief Scientific Advisory to the Serum Institute of India. He is also serving as a senior strategic advisory to SICPA, the Pandemic Center at Brown University as well as a number of biotech and technology companies.

He recently stepped down as CEO, of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance after 12 years. He also co-created COVAX in 2020. He founded the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in 1996.

Previously worked for the Rockefeller Foundation, US CDC and the Carter Center; consulted or worked in more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Author of hundreds of articles and opinion pieces; writes extensively on infectious disease; and serves as media commentator on vaccines, health technology, outbreak prevention and global health issues.