Dr Pieter Neels is a native of Belgium where he trained as an MD (University of Antwerp,
1985) and was boarded as a general practitioner.In 1994 he was engaged by a pharmaceutical company as medical director head of
regulatory affaires until 1997.
In 1997, he joined the Belgian Ministry of Public Health as a senior evaluator of the clinical part of registration files in the field of cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology (diabetes), ...
In 2001 he was appointed CPMP member. In 2002 he was asked to take over all Belgian central vaccine rapporteurships.

He was elected vice-chair of Vaccine Working Party, a CHMP workgroup for vaccines for discussion on development and evaluation of registration files for vaccines until June 2013. WHO has asked Dr Neels to attend many meetings on vaccine development all over the
world in order to share the EU regulatory requirements/competence in vaccinology.

Dr Neels is also a member of the worldwide network on vaccine promotion as he is asked to attend the ADVAC course (Foundation Mérieux). In 2013 Dr Neels was nominated associate Professor at the Namur University for a course in Vaccinology, he retired in 2020.

In 2014 Dr Neels was elected board member of IABS-EU and in 2016 he accepted to chair the Human Vaccine Committee of IABS. As chair of the Human Vaccine Committee of IABS, Dr. Neels has organised several conferences on challenging topics on regulatory affaires in vaccinology.
Between 1997 and 2013 dr. Neels was a member of the regulatory community in the EU and one of leading scientists on vaccine development and evaluation. He was co-author of many reports on:
• Vaccine scientific advice on specific questions on development of new vaccines
• Assessment reports on new vaccines
• New guidance documents on vaccine development
• Member of EMA’s workgroup on pandemic preparedness

Internationally, Dr Neels has been asked to share his knowledge and views on vaccine development and Benefit Risk Balance assessment on many occasions. He attended the 7 first AVAREF meetings, many DCVRN meetings and was asked to give training courses in China, Vietnam, Israel, Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Taiwan, Egypt,…

Today Dr. Neels is working with a large number of organizations like WHO, B&MGF, CEPI, EVI, IMI, etc… in giving advice around regulatory affaires for many different vaccines including vaccines on RVF, Chikungunya, Lassa, Nipha, etc… and last but not least COVID-19.

Since 2010, dr. Neels is the co-author of 23 articles on vaccine regulatory affaires with 2 articles submitted for publication.