Barry David Schoub

Barry David Schoub OMS MB BCh, MMed , MD, DSc, FRC Path, FCPath, FRSSAf, MASSAf was appointed as the first Professor and Head of the Department of Virology, University of the Witwatersrand in 1978, in 1982 Director of the National Institute for Virology and January 2002 Executive Director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, retiring at the end August 2010.In 1977 he received a United States Public Health Service International Postdoctoral Fellowship and was the first recipient of the James Gear International Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA.

He has been a member of a number of international bodies and served as advisor for several WHO programmes including polio, measles, RSV and influenza. He was a member of the WHO Advisory Committee for Poliomyelitis Eradication [ACPE] and a polio expert for the International Health Regulations of WHO. He served on the Board of the International Association of Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) and the Task Force for Immunization for WHO-AFRO. He was the founding chairman of the country’s National Advisory Group on Immunization. He chaired the Board of the National Health Laboratory Service and the Scientific Advisory Panel and the Board of Trustees of the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation. He has published over 280 scientific publications, 16 chapters in books and a book on HIV/AIDS (Cambridge University Press)

Amongst the awards he has received are the Order of Mapungubwe (Silver) from the State President, the Paul Harris Award of Rotary International, the 2012 Jewish Achievers Award, lifetime achievement award of the African Society for Laboratory Medicine, lifetime membership of FIDSSA, the 2012 Research Award of the NHLS and the Daubenton prize of the University of the Witwatersrand