Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Disease
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Ron Dagan is Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He founded the Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit at the Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva and was its director from 1987 to 2014. He obtained his MD degree in 1974 (Hadassah Medical School, Hebrew University, Jerusalem). In 1982, he embarked on a 3-year Fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Rochester, NY.
Prof. Dagan is a member of the Israeli National Academy of Science in Medicine. He has served on the National Advisory Committee on Infectious Diseases and Immunization since 1991 and has been a member of the Nationwide Advisory on Corona Vaccines, since 2020. He is a Founding Member of the World Society of Pediatric Infectious Diseases (WSPID), a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), and an honorary member of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID). Prof. Dagan served as a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society of Infectious Disease (ISID; 2010-2016), President of ESPID (2004-2006), President of the WSPID (2006-2009) and as Chair of the Board of the International Symposia on Pneumococcus and Pneumococcal Diseases (ISPPD; 2010-2016).
Professor Dagan serves on the editorial board of several peer-reviewed journals, including Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases and Vaccine. He is a recipient of many grants and awards. He has contributed >550 original articles, reviews and book chapters, and has presented >580 papers at national and international scientific meetings. Professor Dagan has earned international recognition for his research, focusing largely on vaccine preventable diseases, with particular emphasis on pneumococcal diseases, epidemiology and vaccines and the epidemiology of pediatric respiratory infections.