Yasmine Belkaid is the daughter of an Algerian politician and multiportfolio minister assassinated in 1995. She is the second woman to head the French Pasteur Institute, which specializes in the study of biology, viral diseases and vaccines.
Her research concerns the relationship between microbes and the human immune system, and its interaction with infectious diseases. She runs the Center for Human Immunology at the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH), responsible for medical and biomedical research.