David Heymann is a medical doctor and epidemiologist, and Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at LSHTM in the UK. From 1989 to 2009 he held various leadership positions in infectious diseases at WHO, including polio eradication, and in 2003 headed the WHO global response to SARS in his role as executive director of communicable diseases.
In 1976, after spending two years working in India on smallpox eradication, he was a member of the CDC (Atlanta) team that investigated the first Ebola outbreak in DRC. He stayed on in sub-Saharan Africa for 13 years in various field research positions on Ebola, monkeypox, Lassa Fever, malaria and other tropical diseases. Afterwards he was seconded by CDC to WHO. He has published over 275 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, is editor of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, and is an elected member of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine.