Yanis Ben Amor

Dr. Yanis Ben Amor is the Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. At SIPA, Dr. Ben Amor is teaching the Fall semester course: “Introduction to Global Health”.

Dr. Ben Amor is also the Director of the Tropical Laboratory Initiative, a program launched by Columbia to promote access to diagnostic services to patients in remote rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. He is a molecular biologist and technical advisor responsible for developing effective infectious diseases control programs as well as designing and implementing comprehensive laboratory infrastructures and services. He has joined Professor Sachs’ team in 2004.

Dr Ben Amor has over 15 years of research experience in infectious diseases, mainly tuberculosis and HIV. He was involved in many projects all over the world conducting research on new diagnostic tests for tuberculosis and HIV as well as improving quality of care and access to tuberculosis treatment for patients in developing countries and has previously worked for several organizations such as the Pasteur Institute (Paris, France) and the Public Health Research Institute (Newark, New Jersey). Dr. Ben Amor has a PhD in Molecular Biology, and a Masters in the same discipline from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Rennes (Rennes, France). He has published widely in the areas of tuberculosis diagnosis, global health, and prevention. He is also regularly a speaker on behalf of Columbia University and the Earth Institute at various conferences worldwide.

Education

• PhD, École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Rennes
• MA, École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Rennes
• BA, Lycée Sainte-Geneviève

Affiliations

• Board member for Operation ASHA, New Delhi, India
• Member of the UNAIDS/UNICEF Inter-Agency Task Team on PMTCT