Jerome H. Kim, MD is the Director General of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI). Dr. Kim led the US Army’s RV144 HIV vaccine trial in Thailand, the first demonstration that an HIV vaccine could prevent human infection and subsequent work identifying immunological and virological correlates. He rose to become the Principal Deputy, US Military HIV Research Program, and Project Manager, HIV Vaccines, US Army Medical Materiel Development Agency.
In 2015 he retired from the US Army and became the 3d Director General of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI). The IVI was founded in 1997 and is the first international organization headquartered in the Republic of Korea. It counts 35 signatory countries and the World Health Organization as supporters. The IVI’s 130 employees work to accelerate R&D in vaccines for Global Health in over 30 countries with collaborators from Korea, Asia and around the world. During Dr. Kim’s tenure IVI’s oral cholera vaccine, produced by a Korean company (EuBiologics), was prequalified, and EuBiologics production of Euvichol has contributed greatly to the worldwide surge in OCV use to prevent cholera. Collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SK Chemicals (Korea) and BioFarma (Indonesia) have brought IVI’s new typhoid conjugate vaccine to Phase II testing. IVI has been critical in generating much needed information on the burden and cost of typhoid (enteric fever) worldwide through the Gates-funded TSAP and SETA programs. IVI’s laboratory is working on new vaccines against Shigella, Salmonella, tuberculosis, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, hepatitis A, and adenovirus. IVI’s $30M annual budget comes from state funders (Korea, Sweden, India), philanthropies (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Samsung Life Public Welfare Foundation, Wellcome Trust), US NIH, the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership, and Korean private donors through the Korea Support Committee for IVI.
The author of over 250 publications and 11 patents, Dr. Kim graduated with highest honors in Biology and high honors in History from the University of Hawaii, where he won the Arthur Lyman Dean Prize in the Humanities and the Library Prize for Pacific Islands Area Research. He then attended the Yale University School of Medicine and trained in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Duke University Medical Center. He became a full Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in 2012. Since leaving the military Dr. Kim became an adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University, and Yonsei University. In addition to several honor societies, including Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha, in 2013 he received the John Maher Award for Research Excellence, USUHS, and the Department of the Army R&D Achievement Award for Technical Excellence. Dr. Kim is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He has been listed among the 50 most influential persons in vaccines and serves on scientific advisory groups to private and public organizations, the World Health Organization, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.