Edsel Maurice T. Salvana, MD, DTM&H received his Bachelor of Science in Biology, magna cum laude, from the University of the Philippines Diliman in 1996 and his medical degree from the University of the Philippines College of Medicine in 2001. He trained in internal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and did his fellowship in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He returned in 2008 as a Balik Scientist of the Department of Science and Technology.

He is an associate professor of medicine at the Philippine General Hospital and is assistant director and research faculty at the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the National Institutes of Health. He is also adjunct faculty for Global Health at the University of Pittsburgh

He was selected as an Outstanding Young Scientist for 2010 by the National Academy of Science and Technology for his work in tropical medicine and was awarded The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Philippines award in the same year for medicine and social activism in HIV. He was recently chosen as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World for 2012 for Humanitarian and Voluntary Leadership by JCI International for the tremendous national and international impact of his HIV advocacy.

In 2013 he was selected for the IAP Young Physician Leaders (YPL) programme, a project set up by IAP to train emerging leaders working in healthcare centres around the world and link them together in a peer-support network.