Congratulations to Professor Keertan Dheda who delivered a Keynote address at the 2017 American Thoracic Society Conference in Washing DC that was attended by ~17000 people. The keynote address is an unopposed lecture of approximately 60 minutes, when no other parallel sessions or lectures are running, that recognizes leading international scientific excellence in a particular field of pulmonary medicine. Four sets of keynote lectures were delivered during the Conference, one of which was by Anthony S. Fauci, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). A certificate of commendation was awarded to Prof Dheda at the end of the lecture and the event was covered in the American local news.