Scientific Program Committee and Community Liaison Subcommittee

Elaine J. Abrams, MD

Dr Abrams is Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center and Senior Research Director at ICAP at Columbia University in New York, New York.

Research Focus: Prevention and treatment of pediatric HIV and other associated infections, maternal health, clinical trials of antiretroviral drug efficacy and new formulations, and innovative models of HIV care and service delivery

Dr Barnabas is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and a South African physician-scientist. Over the past 15 years, her research has focused on interventions for HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatment and prevention. She is particularly interested in novel approaches that increase access to services. She led the DO ART (Delivery Optimization for Antiretroviral therapy) Study that evaluated the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of decentralized, community-based ART. Also, she leads work to increase access to HIV care, including testing lottery incentives and home delivery in the SMART ART (Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial of scalable interventions for ART delivery in South Africa) Study. She is the Principal Investigator of the KEN SHE (KENya Single-dose HPV-vaccine Efficacy) Study which demonstrated high efficacy of single-dose human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, changing World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. She conducts health economic and epidemiologic modeling to inform affordability and impact on health of new HIV and STI treatment and prevention strategies.

Research Focus: Identifying effective and scalable HIV, HPV, and infectious disease treatment and prevention strategies to increase access across diverse communities and promote equity in health

Dr Benson is Professor of Medicine, Senior Attending Physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Director of the Infectious Diseases Training Program, Director of the Antiviral Research Center, the Principal Investigator of the CD4 Collaborative HIV Clinical Trials Unit at the University of California San Diego in San Diego, California, and President of the CROI Foundation. She is an internationally recognized researcher and clinician and has worked in the field of HIV/AIDS since 1984.

Research Focus: Treatment and prevention of HIV-associated tuberculosis, the development of rapid point-of-care diagnostic assays for resource-limited settings, and new antiretroviral drug development

Dr Betts is Professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who studies human T-cell immunology in the context of HIV and autoimmunity. His recent work focuses on tissue viral reservoirs and development of immune-based therapeutic strategies for HIV cure and eradication.

Research Focus: Human immune responses, viral immunology, HIV immunopathogenesis, vaccine-induced immune responses 

Dr Chaisson is Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and International Health and director of the Center for AIDS Research and the Center for Tuberculosis Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He has led numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH)-, Centers for Disease Control (CDC)-, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-, and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-funded trials of HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and TB/HIV interventions over the past 35 years. He was the inaugural chair of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group TB Transformative Science Group and established the first international trial sites for the TB Trials Consortium. He is currently the Chief of Party for SMART4TB, a US State Department-funded consortium conducting research, capacity-strengthening, and policy development to achieve the End TB goals.

Research Focus: Tuberculosis and HIV infection, including epidemiology, clinical trials, diagnostics, and population-level interventions

Dr Chiao is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. She has a joint appointment in the Department of General Oncology.

Research Focus: Virally mediated cancers and cancers in people with HIV, including Kaposi sarcoma and human papillomavirus-related precancers

Dr Chomont is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Université de Montréal–CHUM Research Center in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dr Chomont oversees studies to unravel the molecular mechanisms involved in HIV latency and to develop novel therapeutic strategies aimed at reducing the size of the HIV reservoir.

Research Focus: Characterization of the reservoirs for HIV during antiretroviral therapy

Dr Coffin is American Cancer Society Research Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the founding Director of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) HIV Dynamics and Replication Program, to which he still serves as a consultant. He has contributed more than 250 articles to the scientific literature, largely on the subjects of mechanisms of replication and evolution of retroviruses, including HIV, and the interaction of HIV with its human host.

Research Focus: Interactions of retroviruses with their host cells and organisms, with a particular focus on persistence and latency of HIV as barriers to achieving a drug-free cure

Dr Currier is a Professor of Medicine, Executive Vice Chair for Research, Co-Director of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA)–Charles Drew University Center for AIDS Research, and Michael and Sue Steinberg Endowed Chair in Global AIDS Research in the Department of Medicine at UCLA. She is Immediate Past Chair of the NIH-sponsored ACTG Network.

Research Focus: Antiretroviral therapy, long-term complications of HIV disease with an emphasis on cardiovascular disease and women’s health

Dr del Rio is Professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and Professor of Global Health and Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University. He is Principal Investigator and co-Director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and co-Principal Investigator of the Emory Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit. He has worked for over 2 decades in hospitals and clinics with marginalized populations, including persons who use drugs, to improve outcomes of those infected with HIV and to prevent infection with those at risk. Beyond his work in Atlanta, he conducts HIV research and training in Mexico, Kenya, Ethiopia, Thailand, and the Country of Georgia.

Research Focus: Early diagnosis, access to care, compliance with antiretroviral therapy, and the prevention of HIV infection

Dr Frater is a Professor of Infectious Diseases and Honorary Consultant with the University of Oxford. He is scientific lead and co-chair of CHERUB (Collaborative HIV Eradication of Reservoirs: UK BRC), which brings together internationally-recognized researchers from 5 UK Biomedical Research Centres to provide a unique experimental medicine approach to new HIV therapeutic strategies.

Research Focus: Immune responses, long-term cure for HIV, and virology studies to see how the genetic code of HIV might inform new therapies

Dr Gandhi is a Professor of Medicine and Associate Chief in the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). She is also the Director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). Her research focuses on optimizing outcomes on HIV prevention and treatment, including long-acting modalities and adherence interventions. She also serves as the Chair of the Antiretroviral Treatment Strategies group in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG).

Research Focus: HIV and women, adherence measurement and interventions in HIV treatment and prevention, and optimizing the use of long-acting treatment and prevention modalities

Dr Gandhi is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). Dr Gandhi is Vice-Chair of the ACTG. He is also the site leader of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Clinical Research Site in the ACTG. He is the Director of HIV Education at MGH. Dr Gandhi is Vice-Chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel, Chair of the International Antiviral Society–USA Panel on Antiretroviral Drugs for Treatment and Prevention of HIV in Adults, and the Lead Editor for Infectious Diseases, NEJM Clinician. Dr Gandhi graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed his medical residency and chief residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his infectious diseases fellowship training at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Research Focus: Antiretroviral agents, COVID-19, HIV clinical trials, HIV/hepatitis coinfections 

Dr Gisslén is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, and Senior Consultant in Infectious Diseases at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has also served as the State Epidemiologist at the Public Health Agency of Sweden. His research primarily focuses on HIV infection of the central nervous system (CNS), with particular emphasis on cerebrospinal fluid and blood biomarkers, antiretroviral treatment, CNS HIV virology, and viral persistence in the CNS. He has also published widely on COVID-19, especially its effects on the CNS.

Research Focus: HIV infection of the central nervous system

Dr Havlir is Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), the Robert Weiss Memorial Chair for HIV/AIDS Research, Director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute, and the Chief of the HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital in San Francisco, California. She coleads a long-standing multidisciplinary UCSF-Makerere University research collaboration focusing on epidemiologic, clinical, translational, and implementation science studies of integrated population level approaches to HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and noncommunicable diseases in Uganda in Kenya. She is cofounder of San Francisco’s Getting to Zero consortium.

Research Focus: HIV treatment and prevention and coinfections, including TB

Dr Heffron is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Senior Associate Director for Research in the Infectious Diseases Division. She is a clinical epidemiologist and HIV prevention researcher with experience that incorporates implementation science, clinical trials, behavioral science, and qualitative research. Dr Heffron leads numerous research projects focused on biomedical HIV prevention using preexposure prophylaxis, including studies of novel products and the optimization of delivery of efficacious products, with close collaborations in Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. She is the Director of the Center for AIDS Research at UAB, a center with a 35-year history of supporting HIV research across disciplines of basic, clinical, implementation, and community sciences. Throughout her career she has been a mentor to dozens of trainees including doctoral students, fellows, and early career investigators at US and African institutions.

Research Focus: HIV prevention, reproductive health, clinical trials, and implementation science

Dr Hillier is Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and a Senior Investigator at Magee-Women’s Research Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In addition, she has done research in the area of contraceptive hormones and HIV risk and the preclinical and early clinical development of novel formulations of antiretroviral drugs for the prevention of HIV.

Research Focus:  Reproductive infectious diseases, with an emphasis on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV

Dr Ho is an Associate Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. She is an Investigator for basic science and translational collaboration projects, including National Institutes of Health (NIH) Structural Biology Center CHEETAH (Center for the Structural Biology of HIV Infection, Restriction, and Viral Dynamics) and NIH Martin Delaney Collaboratories BEAT HIV (Delaney Collaboratory to Cure HIV-1 Infection by Combination Immunotherapy) and REACH (Research Enterprise to Advance a Cure for HIV).

Research Focus: Understanding HIV-1 persistence and HIV-1-induced immune dysfunction using single-genome and single-cell approaches on clinical samples

Dr Jao is the Susan B. DuPree Founders’ Board Professor in Pediatrics and Medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Director of the Section on Pediatric, Adolescent, and Maternal HIV Infection at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.  She is Co-Chair of the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) network, as well as Principal Investigator of several NIH-funded clinical and translational studies in both the United States and sub-Saharan Africa that evaluate the intersection of maternal child health in the context of HIV.

Research Focus: Perinatal HIV and exposure, cardiometabolic complications of antiretroviral therapy in pregnant individuals with HIV and their children, and pediatric HIV cure and remission

Dr Jolly is Professor of Virus Cell Biology at Queen Mary University of London.

Research Focus: HIV cell biology, viral cell-cell spread, T-cell biology, and SARS-CoV-2

Dr Landovitz is a Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California Los Angeles, and Director of the UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research & Education. His work includes clinical trials, implementation science, and social science. He has a particular research focus in agents for preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP), including long-acting and extended-release agents and their advantages and liabilities, as well as the implementation and optimization of HIV testing algorithms and the selection of ART regimens in the context of PrEP breakthoughs. He is the MPI of the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN).

Research Focus: Optimization of the use of antiviral agents for both HIV therapeutics and HIV prevention

Dr Lok is the Dame Sheila Sherlock Distinguished University Professor of Hepatology and Internal Medicine and the Alice Lohrman Andrews Research Professor of Hepatology in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has published more than 650 papers on viral hepatitis and liver diseases, is the coauthor of 6 editions of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases Guidelines on Hepatitis B, and was among the top 1% most-cited scientists in the world for the decade of 2002 to 2012. Dr Lok is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a recipient of numerous awards for research, mentoring, and service to the scientific community. She was president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in 2017, has served as an associate editor for journals including Hepatology, Journal of Viral Hepatitis, Gastroenterology, and Hepatology Communications, and is currently a senior associate editor for Hepatology.

Research Focus: Natural history and treatment of hepatitis B and C, as well as the prevention of liver cancer

Dr Mallon is an Infectious Diseases specialist, Full Professor of Microbial Diseases in University College Dublin (UCD), and director of the UCD Centre for Experimental Pathogen Host Research (CEPHR).  He is a member of the Governing Board of the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS), Head of Education for EACS, and a member of the EACS Guidelines Panel.

Research Focus: Long term outcomes in HIV, precision medicine, and development of companion diagnostics for new and emerging infectious diseases

Dr Meintjes is a Clinical Professor of Infectious Diseases at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He is an adult Infectious Diseases Specialist. In addition to his research focus, his group also investigates drug-resistant tuberculosis, diagnostics for tuberculosis (TB), and antiretroviral therapy strategies.

Research Focus:  Clinical conditions affecting patients with advanced HIV disease, including disseminated HIV-associated TB, immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome, and cryptococcal meningitis

Dr Mermin is the Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He previously served as Director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he oversaw the agency’s domestic research, policy, and prevention activities for these diseases. Prior to this, he was Director of CDC-Kenya and Director of CDC-Uganda. His work focuses on evaluating and implementing practical, cost-effective interventions and policies.

Research Focus: HIV and STI prevention, cost-effectiveness analysis, use of policy as a public health tool

Dr Molina is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Paris Cité, and Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Saint-Louis and Lariboisière Hospitals in Paris, France. He is a member of ANRS (French Agency for research on HIV, hepatitis, STIs and emerging infectious diseases) and EACS (European AIDS Clinical Society). His work includes clinical trials of antiretroviral drug efficacy, use of antiretrovirals for preexposure prophylaxis, and strategies to reduce the burden of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Research Focus: Antiretroviral therapy for treatment and prevention of HIV infection in adults, with an interest in other STIs

Dr Moore is a Research Professor and Director of the Antibody Immunity Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Research Focus: Antibodies to viral infections and their interplay with the evolving virus

Dr Mujugira is a Senior Research Scientist at Makerere University Infectious Diseases Institute and an Affiliate Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington. With over 20 years of experience conducting HIV prevention clinical trials in East and Southern Africa, his research has successfully supported evidence-based HIV policy change at both global and country levels. He has served as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on several National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded HIV preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) effectiveness trials, demonstration projects, and implementation studies directed toward underserved and vulnerable key populations in Uganda. He is currently evaluating the use of long-acting antiretrovirals for HIV prevention.

Research Focus: HIV prevention for key and priority populations

Dr Myer is Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Public Health at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His work includes clinical-, health systems-, and population-based studies investigating the health of women with HIV during pregnancy and postpartum, the health and development of their families over time, and HIV prevention options for women at risk of HIV acquisition.

Research Focus: Women’s, maternal, and child health in the context of HIV across southern Africa

Dr Ndhlovu is the Herbert J. and Ann L. Siegel Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Professor of Immunology in Medicine and Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medicine. He leads the HIV Immunopathogensis Laboratory and his research combines immunology, virology, and epigenetic methods exploring molecular mechanism of HIV pathogenesis and persistence. He is Co-Principal Investigator of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Martin Delaney Collaboratory for HIV Cure “HOPE” and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded Single Cell Opioid Responses in the Context of HIV (SCORCH) programs. He is an honorary member of the American Association of Physicians and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He serves on the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Committee, is Co-Editor in Chief of the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, and chairs the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR) Scientific Advisory Committee.

Research Focus: HIV and aging; developing specific strategies to prevent, slow, or eliminate complications associated with HIV; HIV cure and remission; and HIV and addiction

Dr Neil is a Professor of Virology at King’s College London. He is a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow and was appointed Professor of Virology in 2015.

Research Focus: HIV cell biology and immunology, antiviral restriction, and Ebola virus disease

Dr Nelson is the Independence Foundation Professor of Nursing at Yale University, Director of the Justice, Community Capacity, and Equity Core in the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), and Co-Director of the Research Education Institute for Diverse Scholars (REIDS) at the Yale School of Public Health. He is the founder and co-lead of HIV Implementation Science to Optimize Research Impact (HISTORI), a global congress of scientists, implementing organizations, and community members working to translate biomedical prevention discoveries into clinical and community practice with Black communities in the United States. He also founded the Kumasi & Accra Project to Prevent Adolescent HIV (KAPPAH), an implementation science alliance focusing on sustainable, community-led HIV prevention solutions for sexual minorities in Ghana. He is an elected Fellow in the New York Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Nursing.

Research Focus: HIV prevention and treatment, implementation science, integrated strategies, and adolescent health

Dr Nuwagaba-Biribonwoha is a medical doctor and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She is the research director of ICAP in Eswatini and clinical research site (CRS) leader at the Eswatini Prevention Center CRS. She oversees a diverse portfolio of clinical research, program evaluations, implementation science, surveys, and surveillance activities. She leads multiple projects as a local Principal Investigator, including HIV prevention trials with oral and injectable HIV preexposure prophylaxis, COVID-19 and HPV vaccination among people with HIV, and diagnosis and management of sexually transmitted infections. Her work has included leadership of 2 Eswatini Population HIV Impact Assessments (PHIA) conducted in 2016 and 2021, the 2022 Eswatini Violence Against Children Survey (VACS), and surveillance programs to provide real-time data on HIV recent infections and case-based programs, as well as sentinel and ports-of-entry surveillance activities for COVID-19, acute febrile illnesses, and influenza-like illnesses in support of the global health security agenda. Dr Nuwagaba-Biribonwoha teaches Implementation Science in Public Health Programs at the Columbia University Epidemiology and Population Health Summer Institute (episummer@columbia) and has over 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals. 

Research Focus: Clinical research on HIV, COVID-19, and HPV/cervical cancer prevention 

Dr Okoye is a Professor at the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute and the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). He is also an affiliate Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the OHSU School of Medicine. Dr Okoye’s research focuses on HIV pathogenesis and cure, using nonhuman primate models to explore the challenges of eradicating HIV. Additionally, he is working on developing therapeutic interventions aimed at reducing the reliance on lifelong antiretroviral therapy for individuals living with HIV.

Research Focus: HIV pathogenesis, mechanisms of persistence during therapy, and HIV cure strategies

Dr Paredes is Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases, Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol, and Principal investigator of the Microbial Genomics Lab at the irsiCaixa Institute, in Badalona, Spain. He is Distinguished Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona and Adjunct Associate Professor of the Department of Pathology with the Center for Global Health and Diseases at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is co-Chair the Scientific Steering Committee of the STRIVE (Strategies and Treatments for Respiratory Infections and Viral Emergencies) network, member of the RECOVER-TLC advisory group, the IAS–USA Drug Resistance Mutations Group, and the WHO HIVResNet Steering Group. His department hosts the largest Long COVID Unit in Spain.

Research Focus: HIV and COVID-19 therapeutics, long COVID, microbiome science, and HIV drug resistance

Dr Richman is Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Medicine (Emeritus) at University of California San Diego in San Diego, California. He held the Florence Seeley Riford Chair in AIDS Research. He currently is Director of the UC San Diego HIV Institute. Dr Richman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association of Physicians, and the Infectious Disease Society of America. He is an infectious diseases clinician whose research focused on influenza virus, herpesviruses, and hemorrhagic fever viruses before concentrating on HIV in the 1980s. He participated in the development of most of the first antiretroviral drugs and helped to design and conduct the clinical evaluation of new drugs and treatment strategies, including the first trial of combination antiretroviral therapy and the initial study documenting the value of rendering plasma HIV RNA undetectable. HIV drug resistance was originally recognized in his laboratory. In addition to his continuing interest in HIV treatment and drug resistance, his research interests have focused on HIV pathogenesis, including the issues of viral latency and evolution.

Research Focus: Natural history, pathogenesis, and the latent reservoir of HIV

Dr Rutishauser is an Associate Professor in the Division of Experimental Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. She is an infectious disease-trained physician scientist, and her research focuses on characterizing immune responses that correlate with post-ART control of HIV with a focus on understanding the regulation of HIV-specific CD8+ T-cell responses.

Research Focus: Effective and durable CD8+ T cell immunity to viral pathogens (eg, HIV, SARS-CoV-2) and vaccination at different stages of human development 

Dr Scarsi is the Lewis and Antonia Harris Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), with appointments in both the College of Pharmacy and College of Medicine. Her clinical pharmacology research program focuses on optimizing therapies for persons with HIV, with an emphasis on long-acting agents, sex- and gender-related issues and tuberculosis coinfection. She has served terms on the US Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents, the Board of Directors for the HIV Medical Association, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council.

Research Focus: Using clinical pharmacology to optimize therapies for persons with HIV on long-acting agents, sex- and gender-related issues, and tuberculosis coinfection

Dr Schooley is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego. He completed medical school, an internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins, and infectious disease fellowships at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in 1981. His longer-term research efforts are directed at the pathogenesis and therapy of RNA virus infections. He has been heavily involved in the development of antiviral chemotherapy directed at HIV, hepatitis C virus, and the herpes group viruses, as well as in research, teaching, and infrastructure building efforts in sub-Saharan Africa. Following his successful treatment of a multidrug resistant A baumannii infection in a fellow faculty member at UC San Diego, he has become interested in the use of viruses as therapeutic agents – namely, the use of bacteriophages to treat multidrug resistant bacterial infections. He currently serves as Co-Director of UC San Diego’s phage research center (the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics, IPATH).

Research Focus: HIV, hepatitis C virus, herpes group viruses, and the use of bacteriophages to treat multidrug resistant bacterial infections

Dr Scott is the Clinical Research Medical Director at Bridge HIV, San Francisco Department of Public Health and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is also the Medical Director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF), overseeing one of the largest single preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) clinics in California. His research has focused on HIV vaccine and PrEP clinical trials within the HIV Prevention Trials Network, HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), and Adolescent Trials Network; the use of mobile health technology to improve uptake of HIV prevention interventions; and implementation of PrEP and doxycycline PEP within clinical settings in the US. He also serves on the Executive Management Team for HVTN.

Research Focus: HIV prevention, HIV vaccines, and STI prevention

Dr Sohn is the Director of the Therapeutics Research, Education, and AIDS Training in Asia (TREAT Asia) program in Thailand and Vice President of Global Initiatives of the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). She also is a Volunteer Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco. She has been working in Asia for 20 years, conducting clinical and epidemiology HIV research in collaboration with a research network stretching across 12 countries.

Research Focus: HIV treatment outcomes, especially among children and adolescents

Dr Thomas is the Stanhope Bayne-Jones Professor of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He is trained in infectious diseases and cares for patients with HIV and chronic viral hepatitis. From 2006 to 2022, Dr Thomas served as the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases.

Research Focus: Viral hepatitis, especially as it occurs in persons with HIV

Dr Wensing is a leading clinical virologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht, head of the microbiology training program, and lecturer at the Medical School. She is a Honorary Professor of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in South Africa. She consults on clinical management of HIV drug resistance for multiple HIV centers. She is advisor for the WHO HIV resistance network and chair of the international Panel that assesses HIV-1 Drug Resistance mutations (the IAS–USA Drug Resistance Mutations Group). She is principal investigator of various international studies and collaborations and steering committee member of the Ndlovu Research Consortium. She is a governing board member of the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) and Chair European HIV drug resistance surveillance program SPREAD. She is a member of the organizing committee of the international HIV Drug Resistance Workshop and an active member of serval guideline committees. Annemarie is co-principal investigator of international collaborative HIV cure projects, such as the IciStem consortium (www.IciStem.org) and the post-mortem FIND study at WITS university.

Research Focus: HIV cure, transmission and mechanisms of HIV drug-resistance, and SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis

Luciana P. Kamel, MA

Luciana Kamel is a Senior Community Engagement Coordinator for research projects at the Instituto Nacional de Infectologia Evandro Chagas, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is also a PhD candidate in the Social Medicine Program at the Institute of Social Medicine, State University of Rio de Janeiro (IMS/UERJ). She serves as a Community Partner representative with the Office of HIV/AIDS Network Coordination (HANC) and is a member of the Community Partners (CP) Executive Committee. Ms Kamel holds a Master of Science in Psychosociology and Community Social Ecology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UFRJ and a Bachelor of Laws from Estácio de Sá University in Rio de Janeiro. She also completed a postgraduate degree in Science Communication at Casa Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz. She has supported multidisciplinary HIV prevention and treatment clinical research funded by the US NIH Division of AIDS (DAIDS), including collaborations with the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), and the Military HIV Research Program (MHRP). Since 2024, she has been part of the Latin American and Caribbean Cure research initiative.

Grace Kumwenda, MSc, MA, BA

Grace Kumwenda is a Public Health Practitioner and Program Manager with over 15 years of experience in HIV prevention implementation, research, and advocacy. She is Regional Program Manager at AVAC, leading community engagement in HIV prevention clinical trial design and advocacy for HIV prevention research and development. Ms Kumwenda has served as Chief of Party for PEPFAR-funded programs in Malawi, where she helped establish the country’s first key population clinics in partnership with the Ministry of Health. She has been a coinvestigator in several HIV prevention implementation studies and has extensive expertise in program management and policy influence. She also serves on boards and committees, including the African Women HIV Prevention Community Accountability Board, Elevate Her–Malawi, and the PrEP Steering Committee at the Forum for Collaborative Research. She holds a Master of Science in International Public Health.

Udom Likhitwonnawut, BS

Udom Likhitwonnawut was a consultant on community engagement in Thailand for AVAC from 2012 to 2024. His responsibilities included capacity building and networking for existing HIV community advisory boards (CABs) in Thailand, promoting community participation in HIV research, and advocating for the implementation of good participatory practices in biomedical HIV prevention research. Mr Likhitwonnawut has been an unpaid advisor for HIV CABs with the Institute of HIV Research and Innovation and the Vaccine Trial Center of Mahidol University. He was a member of the National Subcommittee on HIV Vaccine Development, representing the Thai NGO Coalition on AIDS for more than 20 years. He also worked as consultant on CAB constitution for the Community Engagement team of the Retrovirology Department of Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science from 2011 to 2018.

Michael Louella, BS

Michael Louella has worked in HIV treatment research for more than 25 years, engaging communities affected by HIV in Seattle and across the US in clinical trials toward the treatment and potential elimination of HIV, primarily through the ACTG Network. He joined the defeatHIV Martin Delaney Collaboratory as their Community Engagement Project Manager in 2013, focusing his advocacy efforts on cell and gene therapies for HIV cure. He formerly worked as a high school English teacher, an actor, a director and producer of summer stock theater, and a baker of bread. He helped to host the Reunion Project Seattle in 2017 and works as a steering committee member of the Reunion Project to manifest events for HIV long-term survivors. In 2021, he joined the Global Gene Therapy Initiative, an alliance of key stakeholders including clinicians, scientists, engineers, advocates, and community members brought together to enable access to and implementation of gene therapies as curative medicines for presently incurable diseases in low- and middle-income countries. He is also the chair of the DARE Collaboratory’s community advisory board, serves as a member of the Martin Delaney Collaboratories Community Advisory Board (MDC CAB), and is proud to coordinate a community advisory board of people affected by herpes that informs the research of Keith Jerome towards a gene therapy cure for HSV-1 and -2. He recently began work for the UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) as the Manager of the Office of Community Engagement.

Russell Campbell, MA

Russell Campbell is the director for HIV/AIDS Network Coalition (HANC). Prior to becoming HANC Director, Russell served as HANC Deputy Director providing oversight and strategic direction for all cross-network coordination activities. Russell has served as the Community Partners Coordinator and as the primary point of contact at HANC for community coordination activities. Russell has a unique mix of skills and experience with facilitation, public health, research, and community involvement. Russell’s demonstrated ability for program management, commitment to building collaborative relationships, and longevity within HANC are all attributes that Russell utilizes in advancing the research goals and objectives defined by the HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Networks and the Division of AIDS (DAIDS). His research focus includes, evaluation and enhancement of community-researcher partnerships, underrepresentation of communities of color in research, new HIV acquisitions among older adults and health disparities.

Susan P. Buchbinder, MD

Connie L. Celum, MD, MPH

Elizabeth Connick, MD

Joseph J. Eron, Jr, MD

Huldrych F. Günthard, MD

Theodora Hatziioannou, PhD

James A. Hoxie, MD

Angela D. Kashuba, PharmD

Frank Kirchhoff, PhD

Richard A. Koup, MD

John W. Mellors, MD

Juergen K. Rockstroh, MD

Sari L. Reisner, ScD

Peter Reiss, MD, PhD

Dawn Averitt

Devan Nambiar, MSc

Jim Pickett

Ntando Yola