Dennis Burton is the Chairman, and Professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbial Science, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA. He was recently awarded the James and Jessie Minor Chair in Immunology. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Oxford University and his Ph.D from Lund University, Sweden in physical biochemistry. He is the Scientific Director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) Neutralizing Antibody Consortium and Neutralizing Antibody Center, Director of The Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) at Scripps, and a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, Boston, USA. He has held many research grants from the NIH and has published more than 350 papers in scientific journals. He has received numerous awards including the Jenner Fellowship of the Lister Institute and a Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. His research is focused on infectious disease, in particular the interplay of antibodies and highly mutable viruses, notably HIV. He is interested in the potential of broadly neutralizing antibodies to inform vaccine design.