page_title: Moncef Slaoui
section_title: COVID-19 pandemic
hierarchical_section_title: Moncef Slaoui / Career / COVID-19 pandemic
caption_attribution_description: English: Moncef Slaoui listens as General Gustave Perna, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Material Command, delivers remarks during an update on vaccine development Thursday, May 15, 2020, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
context_page_description: Moncef Mohamed Slaoui is a Moroccan-born Belgian-American researcher and former head of GlaxoSmithKline's vaccines department. He worked at the company for thirty years, retiring in 2017. On May 15, 2020, President Donald Trump announced that Slaoui would manage the U.S. government's development of a vaccine used to treat coronavirus disease in Operation Warp Speed.
context_section_description: On May 15, 2020, President Donald Trump officially announced Operation Warp Speed, a project to develop and deliver 300 million doses of a vaccine for the coronavirus disease 2019 by January 2021. Operation Warp Speed was managed by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner with the support of the United States Department of Defense and the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
  Slaoui, who called the time frame of 12 to 18 months "very aggressive" but "achievable", was named as the chief adviser of the project, working alongside chief operating officer and four-star general Gustave F. Perna. Other candidates for Slaoui's position reportedly included Elias Zerhouni and Arthur Levinson. President Trump described Slaoui as "one of the most respected men in the world in the production and, really, on the formulation of vaccines", while Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar praised him as "arguably the world’s most experienced and successful vaccine developer".
  To avoid a conflict of interest, Slaoui resigned from the board of the Massachusetts-based biotech firm Moderna, which had been developing a vaccine for the coronavirus. Slaoui faced criticism, particularly from Senator Elizabeth Warren, for continuing to have Moderna stock options worth over $10 million. On May 18, 2020, Slaoui resigned from the board of manufacturing firm Lonza, which Moderna had partnered with to develop a coronavirus vaccine. On May 19, after initially denying a conflict of interest, Slaoui divested his Moderna stock and donated the value it had gained from May 14 onwards to cancer research.
  On May 20, The New York Times reported that Slaoui had also resigned as an adviser to Brii Biosciences, a firm with sizeable Chinese investments, and would be resigning from Artizan Biosciences and Clazado. According to Michael Caputo, Slaoui's decision to retain his GSK stock, even after being announced as Operation Warp Speed's chief adviser, was cleared by the Department of Health and Human Services.
  Slaoui was scheduled to speak at the annual Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) conference on June 9, 2020, but ultimately pulled out, citing his failure to brief Congress beforehand.
caption: Slaoui in the White House Rose Garden, May 15, 2020
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