Professor Pierre Ambroise-Thomas (MD 1963, DSc 1969) is a Honorary Professor of Parasitology and Tropical Medicine at the Faculté de Médecine de Grenoble (France) and the former Head of the Service of Parasitology-Mycology at the University Hospital in the same city. He is Honorary President of the French Academy of Medicine and a member of the French Academy of Pharmacy. He has held several important administrative and political positions in France, mainly at the Ministry of Health, as Director of the Département de la Pharmacie et du Médicament (the French equivalent of the American FDA), the National Council of the Universities, and at the Scientific Councils of CNRS and of ORSTOM (presently the IRD).

In addition, he is the President of the International Federation for Tropical Medicine, a member of the board of the Federation of European Societies of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, President of the Société de Pathologie Exotique and member of several Tropical Medicine Societies. Acting as an Expert for the World Health Organization since 1974, he was appointed by the General Director to the Strategic Technical Advisory Group in charge of counseling the WHO in the Fight against neglected tropical diseases.
Professor Pierre Ambroise-Thomas taught in France (at GRENOBLE and many other universities) as well as in several foreign countries (in Europe, North Africa, Africa, and Asia). He is Honoris causa Professor at the Medical University of Shanghai, where he taught for almost 30 years.

His research activities encompassed mainly the immunology of malaria, of toxoplasmosis and of several other opportunistic parasitic and mycotic diseases (in France, parasitology and mycology are, in fact, associated in the same specialty), as well as the treatment of malaria by arthemisinin combined therapies (ACT). These research works generated more than 350 publications in indexed journals, around 1000 publication in French journals or communications at national and international congresses and 14 books (including the volume “Infectious and parasitic diseases onto the Dictionary of the Académie nationale de Médecine de France”) of which he is the author and the co-author.

Wishing to finalize the research at the bench with the work in the field, Professor Pierre Ambroise-Thomas has conducted – in more than 60 different countries and frequently to the WHO – numerous missions on the main parasitic diseases (malaria, amebiasis, schistosomiasis, onchocercosis, and lymphatic filariasis).

He organized the XVI International Congress on Tropical Medicine and Malaria in Marseille (France) in 2004.

Contact
2, allée des marronniers
38240 MEYLAN / France
Tél (334) 7690-1269;
Fax: (334) 7641-9821
e-mail: pierre.ambroise-thomas@wanadoo.fr>