I think we all are responsible to change culture, not just the leaders, everybody around the table, everybody. Nobody should be a bystander. If someone is not heard, you come back and say "as this person has said". You bring it back; you have to correct. We are creating the world that we want and we are all responsible to change the world. So, I think everybody needs to have a voice to correct things and if we think something is not right, just calmly restoring the situation over and over and over again. I think the next generation is the great place. I feel things are going to change dramatically with the next generation coming. They're in a better place and I think the world is going to be much in better hands in this kind of context of diversity and right than it used to be. I'm very confident about the future.

Yasmine Belkaid is a renowned scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between microbes and the immune system. She is the President as well as the head of the Metaorganism laboratory at the Institut Pasteur.

Belkaid earned her Master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene in Algiers, and a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) from Paris-Sud University. In 1996, she earned her PhD in immunology from the Institut Pasteur, where she studied innate immune responses to leishmania infection. Belkaid then moved to the United States for a postdoctoral fellowship in intracellular parasite biology at NIAID’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases (NIH).

Belkaid has received numerous awards including the Robert Koch Prize, the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Prize, and the AAI Excellence in Mentoring Award. She also serves on the committees of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the Microbiome Technical Advisory Group at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIH Anti-Racism Steering Committee, the American Society of Microbiology, and the Genentech Scientific Resource Board.