The Wellcome Trust has appointed Professor Jeremy Farrar as its new director after Sir Mark Walport stepped down at the end of March to become the government’s chief scientific adviser.

Farrar (pictured) is currently professor of tropical medicine and global health at Oxford University, and has been the director of the university’s clinical research unit in Vietnam, which is supported by the Wellcome Trust and the Vietnam government, since 1996. He will join the organisation on 1 October. Ted Bianco, the Trust’s director of technology transfer, will be acting director until then.

Welcoming Farrar to the organisation, chairman Sir William Castell said: “He is an inspirational leader whose vision has contributed to the development of the Trust’s major overseas programme in South-east Asia into a world-class centre for infectious disease research. We are confident that we could not have found a better person to build on the exceptional work that Mark Walport has overseen at the Trust over the past decade.”

Farrar said it would be a “privilege” to lead the organisation and added: “As a scientist who is grateful to have received Trust funding for my own work, I know first-hand how its flexible support makes such achievements possible. I am honoured to be given the challenge of helping its talented staff and scientists to deliver further extraordinary advances in health.”

He was awarded an OBE in 2005 for services to tropical medicine, and has been awarded the Ho Chi Minh City Medal from the Vietnamese government and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.