Gates Foundation's Peter M. Small Appointed Founding Director of Stony Brook University Global Health Institute

(Press release, March 26, 2016) — Peter M. Small, MD, Deputy Director of the Tuberculosis Delivery Program for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been appointed as Founding Director of the Stony Brook University Global Health Institute (GHI) effective August 1, 2015, announced President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., MD. Established in 2013 with a $10 million philanthropic commitment to endow the Institute based on Stony Brook’s main campus, the Global Health Institute was conceived as a university-wide interdisciplinary research center to drive cutting-edge, health-improvement-oriented research in Madagascar, an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Southeast Africa with which Stony Brook University has a near 30-year history and deep ties. Madagascar is a vital research site for initiatives that will benefit the world because of its rich biodiversity.

“I am very excited that Peter has accepted this position as founding director of the Stony Brook University Global Health Institute,” said President Stanley. “With his remarkable career as an innovator in medicine, science, product development and health care delivery, we anticipate tremendous strides in this area in the years to come.”

Under Dr. Small’s leadership, the Stony Brook GHI will conduct groundbreaking and internationally leading health science research – a distinctive, unique approach that will span from the molecular level to point of delivery – encompassing fundamental work on ecology, developmental economics and disease, largely focused on Madagascar. The Institute will operate within the infrastructure in place at Centre ValBio and its premier research station, NamanaBe Hall, based at the edge of Ranomafana National Park in the Haute Matsiatra and Vatovavy-Fitovinany regions of Madagascar. The NamanaBe Hall research station is the product of nearly three decades of work by world-renowned primatologist Patricia Wright, a professor of anthropology at Stony Brook who founded Centre ValBio in 2003 after establishing Ranomafana Park in 1991.

Wright’s close relationships with local Malagasy communities and the rich scientific potential of Centre ValBio are what drew Jim and Robin Herrnstein to Madagascar, and inspired them to make a $3 million donation to the Global Health Institute. Jim is chair of the Centre ValBio advisory board and Robin serves on the board.

"Jim and I are thrilled that Peter has agreed to become the Founding Director of the GHI,” said Robin Herrnstein. “We are confident that Peter's vision for a multidisciplinary GHI will result in groundbreaking advancements in the way we as a global community understand and address health in resource poor settings."