Leading HIV expert and Director of Imperial’s AHSC Professor Weber has been appointed Dean.

Professor Weber has now taken up the role of Dean, having been Acting Dean since October 2017. He will have responsibility for all aspects of the Faculty’s strategy, operations and finances, as well as contributing to the strategic direction, management and development of Imperial as a whole.

Professor Weber has held a number of leadership roles within the College, including Vice-Dean for Research within the Faculty of Medicine. In 2016 he became Director of Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC), which brings together three NHS trusts and the College to ensure that research discoveries are translated in medical advances, new therapies and techniques as rapidly as possible. Professor Weber will continue to hold this role alongside his new appointment.

A clinician by training, Jonathan Weber is the Jefferiss Professor of Communicable Diseases and Genitourinary (GU) Medicine. Professor Weber began working on HIV in 1982 and since 2001 he has focused on biomedical prevention of HIV infection. More recently, he has been working on HIV vaccine development, leading the UK HIV Vaccine Consortium, a Wellcome Trust-funded collaboration. Since 2001, he has been running active research projects in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa. Professor Weber is currently leading the first ever European HIV vaccine efficacy trial in these four African countries, trialling a novel prime-boost immunisation strategy, using experimental HIV vaccine products developed at Imperial.

Professor Weber is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and served as a Council Member from 2011 – 2014.

Crucial connections

Imperial’s Provost, Professor James Stirling, said: “Our Faculty of Medicine is at the forefront of advancing biomedical discoveries and translating them into the clinical setting. In addition to being one of our most prominent researchers, Professor Weber has a huge amount of leadership experience both at Imperial and with our NHS trust partners. I know he will drive the faculty forward to new advances and successes.”

Professor Jonathan Weber said: “I have been part of the medical faculty for many years, and I am honoured to take up the role of Dean. Collaboration is a vital feature of medicine at Imperial – both externally, and across our departments and Imperial’s other faculties. I look forward to further building these crucial connections during my time as Dean.”

A medical life

Following general medical training, Professor Weber was a Wellcome Trust Clinical Training Fellow at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School (1982-4), and subsequently a Wellcome Trust Lecturer in Cell and Molecular Biology at the Institute for Cancer Research Chester Beatty Labs (1985-88). He was then appointed Senior Lecturer in Infectious Diseases at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital (1988-1991). He became Jefferiss Professor of Communicable Diseases and GU Medicine at Imperial in 1991.

Professor Weber was the Director of Research for the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust from 2007 to 2017. He was the Director of the Imperial NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) Biomedical Research Centre from 2008 to 2017, and is currently an NIHR Senior Investigator.

Jonathan Weber was the founding editor of the journal “AIDS” 1987-1992, the leading specialist journal in the field. He co-founded the WHO Network for HIV Characterisation in 1992, and is currently a member of the Research Advisory Group for the Department for International Development (DfID), the MRC Stratified Medicine Boards and the University Partnership Board of the Francis Crick Institute.