Former Directors
Marc Sprenger, 2010 - 2015
Marc Sprenger was appointed as Director of ECDC in April 2010, taking up the five-year post on 1 May 2010. Prior to coming to ECDC, Dr Sprenger was Director-General of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in Bilthoven, the Netherlands (2003-2010). Before that, he worked as Director of Health at the Netherlands' Healthcare Insurance Board (CVZ) (1999-2003), and Head of the Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology at RIVM (1993-1999).
Key international posts held by Dr Sprenger include being the ECDC Management Board’s founding Chairman (2004 – 2008), and being a member of the Executive Board of the International Association of Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) (2008-2010).
Dr Sprenger is a medical microbiologist with a degree in medicine from the University of Maastricht (1988) and a PhD from Erasmus University, Rotterdam (1990). The subject of his PhD was the epidemiology of influenza.
Zsuzsanna Jakab, 2005 - 2010
Zsuzsanna Jakab was appointed Director of ECDC in March 2005. Before joining the EU, Dr Jakab was Secretary of State in Hungary's Ministry of Health. As the most senior civil servant at the ministry, she had been responsible for overseeing Hungary's implementation of EU policies and laws in her area, administering the spending of EU financial assistance, and managing Hungary's national public health programme.
Before joining the Hungarian government, Dr Jakab worked at the WHO Regional Office for Europe in Denmark for 11 years.
Born in 1951 in Hungary, Dr Jakab holds a Master’s Degree from Eötvös Lóránd University of Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Budapest, a Postgraduate university degree from the University of Political Sciences, Budapest, a diploma of the two foundation courses in public health at the Nordic School of Public Health, Gothenburg, Sweden and a postgraduate diploma from the National Institute of Public Administration and Management.