Moncef Mohamed Slaoui[1] (English: /ˈmɒnsɪf ˈslaʊ.i/; French: [mɔ̃sɛf slawi]; Moroccan Arabic: منصف السلاوي, IPA: [ˈmonsˤəf ˈsːlæwi]; born July 22, 1959) is a Moroccan-born Belgian-American researcher who served as the head of Operation Warp Speed (OPWASP) under President Donald Trump from 2020 to 2021.
[15][16] In 2007, he announced plans to establish a neurosciences research group in Shanghai that would employ a thousand scientists and cost $100 million; it ceased operations in August 2017.
[14] He also spent 27 years researching on a malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, that was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2015 and touted as the first in the world.
[20] Over the next several years, he attempted to sell a public audience on GSK's development of bioelectronic medicine, with appearances on YouTube[21] and at futurist conferences.
[22] In July 2013, he wrote an op-ed in the Huffington Post entitled "It’s Time to Further Incentivize Medical Innovation", in which he outlined three recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the pharmaceutical industry.
[27] In 2016 he was named to the inaugural board of directors of Galvani Bioelectronics, the joint venture between GSK and Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Verily Life Sciences.
[30] On May 15, 2020, President Donald Trump officially announced OPWASP, a project to develop and deliver 300 million doses of a vaccine for the coronavirus disease 2019 by January 2021.
[33] To avoid a conflict of interest, Slaoui resigned from the board of the Massachusetts-based biotech firm Moderna, which had been developing a vaccine for the coronavirus.
[3][34] Slaoui faced criticism, particularly from Senator Elizabeth Warren, for continuing to have Moderna stock options worth over $10 million.
[37] On May 19, after initially denying a conflict of interest, Slaoui divested his Moderna stock and donated the value it had gained from May 14 onwards to cancer research.
According to Michael Caputo, Slaoui's decision to retain his GSK stock, even after being announced as OPWASP's chief adviser, was cleared by the Department of Health and Human Services.
[40] Slaoui was scheduled to speak at the annual Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) conference on June 9, 2020, but ultimately pulled out, citing his failure to brief Congress beforehand.
[41] On October 9, 2020, in a profile of Slaoui, the Wall Street Journal said the COVID-19 vaccines would be accompanied by a tracking system provided jointly by McKesson, Google and Oracle.
[8] His other brother, Mohamed, is a specialist in gastroenterology and his older sister, Hadia, is a university professor of French literature in Morocco.