Carol Corillon

Carol Corillon has worked with the Committee on Human Rights (CHR) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of medicine since 1980, becoming its first director in 1984—a position which she continues to hold today.  She is also executive director of the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies, which was created at her initiative in 1993.  Its founding members were Nobel Laureates Francois Jacob, Max Perutz, and Torsten Wiesel, and Netherlands Council of State member, Judge Pieter van Dijk.  She has led human rights delegations to Chile, Guatemala, Somalia, India, and Turkey and written or contributed to numerous NAS and National Research Council (NRC) reports.

Ms. Corillon has organized, directed and given lectures at Network symposia and workshops at national academies in France, Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, The United Kingdom, and the United States.

Since 1992 Ms. Corillon has been a member of the Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the Conduct of Science of the International Council for Science, popularly known as ICSU.  She has also served as a member of the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch/Africa, the Foreign Policy Roundtable of the Fund for Peace, the advisory board of the Centre for Constitutional Governance in Nigeria, the advisory board of Friends of the Institute for Practical Research and Training in Somaliland, and as director of Friends of IPSO, USA, an NGO that supported the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization.

From 1980 through 1984 Ms. Corillon worked and traveled widely in Africa as a staff member of the NRC’s Advisory Committee on the Sahel.  Its focus was on agroforestry, environmental change, and dune stabilization in the West African Sahel.  Between 1970 and 1980, she was a freelance print and broadcast journalist in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), working for the BBC radio (reporting for the Africa Service in both French and English), Reuters, the Economist, and several other news organizations.