Egypt's Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has expressed its condolences on the death of Egyptian-American infectious-disease expert Dr.  Adel Mahmoud in the United States, Al-Ahram Arabic website reported.

Higher Education Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar mourned the “huge loss” of Mahmoud, who dedicated his life to developing vaccines that have saved millions around the globe.

Mahmoud passed away in New York on 11 June after suffering a brain haemorrhage, his wife, Dr. Sally Hodder, said.

The Egyptian Ministry of State for Emigration and Expatriate Affairs also mourned Mahmoud’s passing in a short statement issued on Thursday.

He was born in Cairo in 1941, and graduated from the University of Cairo's faculty of medicine in 1963. In 1971, he received a PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In 1973, he emigrated to the United States, where he became a postdoctoral researcher at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

In 1988, Mahmoud was recruited by Merck&Co, a major American pharmaceutical company, to head its vaccination department. During his work at Merck, Mahmoud oversaw the development of several important vaccines, including the rotavirus vaccine and HPV vaccine.

Retiring from Merck in 2006, Mahmoud joined Princeton in 2011 as a professor of molecular biology.

He married Hodder, also an infectious-disease specialist, in 1993.