Dr. Chris Wilson is a senior advisor for the Discovery and Translational Sciences team, having previously served as Director from 2010 to 2016. This team seeks to identify, foster and translate fundamental scientific and technological advances into new solutions that can promote global health and wellbeing and help to prevent, diagnose and treat globally important diseases. They collaborate with partners within and outside the foundation to create a more integrated, agile R&D process to address the urgent unmet need for these new solutions.

Before joining the Foundation he was at the University of Washington as Chairman of the Department of Immunology and head of the graduate program in immunology, prior to which he led the Division of Infectious Diseases, Immunology and Rheumatology in the Department of Pediatrics. He has also served on a number of national advisory panels, including the Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Review Committee (2001-2004), the National Advisory Council on Child Health and Human Development, NICHD and the National Institutes of Health Advisory Committee to the Director. He currently serves on the National Advisory Allergy and Infectious Diseases Council (NIAID). He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Wilson received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine and a medical degree from UCLA. He trained in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital /Harvard Medical School and was a post-doctoral fellow in infectious diseases while performing immunology research at Stanford University.