François Jean, PhD, is an expert in antiviral drug discovery and professor of molecular virology at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is the founder of the UBC’s Facility for Infectious Disease and Epidemic Research (FINDER), one of the largest university-based containment level 3 (CL-3) facilities in the world. He is currently leading major international research initiatives funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to discover broad-spectrum drugs active against current infections with the circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants and future pandemic-causing viral pathogens. He is the Lead of Pillar 10, Antiviral Strategies & Antiviral Therapeutics, at the Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network (CoVaRR-Net). He was previously a Science Advisor with the COVID-19 Therapeutic Task Force of the Government of Canada. He has won several prestigious scholarly awards including the CIHR New Investigator Salary Award, the UBC Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Early Career Scholar Start-Up Research Grant, the Thermo Fisher Scientific Award from the Canadian Society for Microbiologists (CSM), and UBC’s Faculty of Science Excellence in Service Award in recognition of his leadership role in establishing FINDER.