Dr. Anthony Fauci is an American physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. Since January 2020, he has been one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force addressing the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in the United States.As a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the United States, he has served public health in various capacities for over fifty years. He has made contributions to HIV/AIDS research and other immunodeficiencies, both as a scientist and as the head of the NIAID at the NIH. The New York Times called Fauci "the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases".