United States
As the Vice President for Vaccine Development, Thomas Hassell led IAVI’s efforts to rapidly advance the most promising HIV vaccine candidates from the lab bench to clinical trials and, ultimately, mature products.
He joined IAVI in 2008 after more than 20 years of industry experience with several leading vaccine developers. In his previous work, he led efforts to take early stage vaccine candidates for a number of humanity’s worst afflictions from ideas all the way through to licensure. Prior to that, he led a team of 250 researchers as Global Vice President of Process Development at Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest vaccine producer. His teams successfully spearheaded national licensure of Pentacel, a childhood combination vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, Haemophilus Influenzae Type B, and polio, as well as Menactra, the first conjugate vaccine to provide protection against four strains of bacterial meningitis. During his time at Sanofi Pasteur, Hassell also oversaw the launch of state-of-the-art vaccine development facilities in Canada, France, and the U.S.
Tom retired from IAVI at the end of September 2022 but continues to engage in global healthcare post retirement.
Trained as a microbiologist, Hassell received his PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University in the U.K. in 1987 and completed a postdoctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in 1989.