Ron Dagan is Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases at the BenGurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva. He founded the Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit at the Department of Pediatrics, Soroka University Medical Center, Beer-Sheva,Israel, and served as its director from 1987 to June 2014. His previous appointments include Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA, from 1993 to 1998, in addition to Advisor for Infectious Diseases at the Israeli Ministry of Health. Professor Dagan obtained his MD degree in 1974 from the Hadassah Medical School of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. In 1982, he embarked on a 3-year Fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. A member of several national and international advisory committees and medical and scientific associations, Professor Dagan was the Chairman of the Advisory Committee for Infectious Diseases of the Israeli Society of Pediatrics from 1992 to 1997 and has served on the National Advisory Committee on Infectious Diseases and Immunization since 1991. He is also a Founding Member of the World Society of Pediatric Infectious Diseases (WSPID) and a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). He served as a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society of Infectious Disease (ISID) from 2010 to 2016. Professor Dagan has been involved in the World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group on Pneumococcal Nasopharyngeal Carriage and the WHO Pneumonia Radiology Working Group. He served as President of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID) from 2004 to 2006, as President of the World Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases (WSPID) from 2006 through 2009 and as Chair of the Board of the International Symposia on Pneumococcus and Pneumococcal Diseases (ISPPD) from 2010 to mid-2016. Professor Dagan serves on the editorial board of several peer-reviewed journals, including Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Infection, Human Vaccines, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vaccine and International Journal of Infectious Diseases. He is a recipient of many grants and awards. During his professional career, he has contributed over 500 original articles, reviews and book chapters, and has presented more than 500 papers at national and international scientific meetings. Professor Dagan has earned international recognition for his research, which has focused largely on the development on vaccine preventable diseases, with particular emphasis on pneumococcal vaccines; the understanding of hepatitis A epidemiology and introduction of hepatitis A vaccines; the epidemiology of respiratory infections in children; clinical aspects of vaccination against antibiotic-resistant pneumococci; the pathology of otitis media, role of resistant organisms in otitis media and prediction of bacteriological response to various antibiotics; and the epidemiology and prevention of enteric and invasive infections in young children.