Professor John Reeder

Until retiring in 2025, John Reeder was Director of TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (since February 2012) and Director of the Research for Health Department at the World Health Organization in Geneva (since establishing it in 2019). 

Before joining TDR, he had accumulated considerable experience as a researcher and in leading international research organisations. He was most recently Director of the Centre for Population Health at the Burnet Institute, Melbourne, Australia’s largest infectious disease research institute. Before this, he was Director of the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research, where he worked on translating scientific findings from the field into policy for improved health.

Professor Reeder began his career in medical microbiology laboratories in the United Kingdom and then moved to health training as a development volunteer in the Highlands of PNG, before joining the world-renowned malaria research team at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. There, he made significant contributions to the study of the molecular basis of pathogenesis and the molecular epidemiology of the malaria parasite.

A naturalized Australian, born and educated in England, he received his PhD in medical microbiology at the University of Manchester. He has published over 210 scientific papers, that span basic laboratory research to large community-based field studies. He is adjunct professor of global health at Monash University, Melbourne, a Distinguished International Fellow of the American Society for Tropical Medicine, and in 2020 received the Mitchell Humanitarian Award for his contribution to end the debilitating disease onchocerciasis.