Barbara Laughon, Ph.D., is Senior Scientist for TB Drug Development Partnerships in the Office of the Director, Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), U.S. National Institutes of Health. In this role, she promotes research on TB drugs through collaborations among public, private, and multilateral organizations by interfacing with NIAID research grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts focused on preclinical and clinical anti-infective drug development for emerging infectious diseases and biodefense. She is active in the STOP-TB Partnership serving in working groups on New Drugs and HIV/TB, and is an executive member of the not-for-profit Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative. Dr. Laughon has served the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development as Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee, as a founding stakeholder, and as a contributor to the preclinical development of PA-824. She has over 20 years of leadership experience in drug development for HIV, opportunistic infections, and TB through oversight of NIH extramural programs in drug discovery, IND-enabling studies, and clinical trials. She serves as advisor to PEPFAR, the U.S. Federal TB Taskforce, the U.S. CDC TB Trials Consortium, and the Global Fund. Prior to joining the NIAID, Dr. Laughon was an assistant professor of medicine in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her research involved the pathophysiology of Clostridium difficile colitis, anaerobic lung abscess, and clinical research on AIDS. Dr. Laughon received her M.S. and Ph.D. in microbiology from the Anaerobe Laboratory at Virginia Tech with a dissertation on the ultrastructure and biochemistry of anaerobic spirochetes. As a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Michigan, she characterized the pathogenic role of anaerobes in advanced periodontal disease. She is a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, a member of the American Society for Microbiology, the IUATLD, and the International AIDS Society. She has published over 50 scientific and review articles.