Dr Joe Cohen  is currently the Vice President of R&D for Vaccines for Emerging Diseases and HIV, where he heads the early development of vaccines against some of the world’s toughest diseases, including GSK’s TB, HIV and malaria vaccines.

Dr. Cohen earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology in 1977 from the City University of New York (NY, USA) for research on genetics and control of gene expression in yeast.

Dr. Cohen joined GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals in 1984 as Senior Scientist in the Department of Molecular Biology R&D. He spent 11 years working on several of GSK Bio’s vaccine and in 1995 was promoted to Director of the Molecular Biology department.

Dr. Cohen is one of the inventors and original patent holders of RTS,S, the only malaria vaccine candidate that has demonstrated efficacy in the field. He has co-authored over 70  peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and is invited regularly to speak  and chair many prestigious conferences in the field of vaccinology.