Els Torreele

Biography

 Since 2009, Dr Torreele has been the director of the Access to Essential Medicines Initiative for the Public Health Program of the Open Society Foundations in New York. The initiative supports and empowers civil society groups in the Global South to advocate for laws, policies and practices that ensure needs-driven health innovation and accessibility of essential medicines for poor and marginalized populations. Before that, Dr Torreele was a Senior Project Manager for DNDi, which she had joined in July 2003 as a founding team member. She pioneered and managed a number of discovery, preclinical, and clinical development projects, in particular for African sleeping sickness. As an academic scientist, Dr Torreele became involved in neglected disease issues in 1999 and assumed the role of Coordinator and Chair of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Working Group (DND-WG) of the Access to Essential Medicines Campaign of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which incubated the DNDi concept. Prior to joining MSF, she served as the R&D Coordinator in the Department of Immunology, Parasitology & Ultrastructure at the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology of Brussels University. Els Torreele graduated as a Bio-Engineer and obtained a PhD in Applied Biological Sciences (Cell Biology and Immunology) from the Free University Brussels (VUB).

Research Interest

 Management