Robert Steffen MD

Robert Steffen is Professor Emeritus of Travel Medicine at the University of Zurich. There he headed the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention of Communicable Diseases and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Traveller's Health. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

Robert has scientifically researched the epidemiology of diseases and accidents in travellers and the prophylactic options that are effective against them. This has resulted in over 400 publications. The first international conference for travel medicine took place in 1988 at the ETH and Steffen is therefore considered the "father of travel medicine" worldwide. He was a co-founder of the International Society of Travel Medicine and its president, and later Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Travel Medicine.

On behalf of the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), he was President of the Federal Commission for Influenza / Pandemic Planning and Vice-President of the Federal Commission for Vaccination Questions, as well as that for Bioterrorism. Since 2022, he has been a consultant on the revision of the International Health Regulation. At the WHO in Geneva, he is regularly consulted as an expert on travel medicine and mass events. Until 2020, he was also Chairman of the WHO Ebola Emergency Commission.