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.  Her work includes clinical trials of antiretroviral drug efficacy, testing strategies to optimize treatment outcomes, and evaluating models of HIV care and service delivery.

Research Focus: Prevention and treatment of HIV infection and related diseases in infants, children, and adolescents

Dr Bar is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is a physician-scientist whose research utilizes innovative sequencing and molecular techniques to identify, enumerate, and characterize the viruses that establish productive infection, circulate during active infection, maintain persistence on therapy, and rebound from latency. Working in primary human samples and the nonhuman primate model, her lab is currently focused on studying the viral and immune dynamics of rebound from latency and the use of broadly neutralizing antibodies in this context.

Research Focus:  Basic mechanisms and translational impact of HIV transmission, pathogenesis, and persistence

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, and 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 Buchbinder is Director of Bridge HIV at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in San Francisco, California.  She serves in leadership positions in the HIV Vaccine Trials Network and the HIV Prevention Trials Network and has participated in numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) and UCSF advisory committees.

Research Focus: Risk factors for HIV acquisition and interventions to prevent HIV infection, including HIV vaccines, preexposure prophylaxis, behavioral interventions, rectal microbicides, and combination modalities

Dr Celum is Professor of Global Health and Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology, and Director of the International Clinical Research Center and Center for AIDS Research in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Dr Celum is an infectious disease epidemiologist with a focus on HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention. She has led multicenter HIV prevention efficacy trials, including genital herpes suppression for prevention of HIV acquisition (HPTN 039) and prevention of HIV transmission and disease progression in HIV serodiscordant couples (Partners in Prevention HSV/HIV Transmission Study). Dr Celum co-led the Partners PrEP Study, a 3-arm trial of tenofovir-based preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among HIV serodiscordant couples in Kenya and Uganda that contributed to US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and World Health Organization (WHO) guidance related to emtricitabine/tenofovir PrEP. She has led implementation science research about PrEP implementation for young African women in multiple countries.  She has co-led the DoxyPEP (Evaluation of Doxycycline Post-exposure Prophylaxis to Reduce Sexually Transmitted Infections in PrEP Users and HIV-infected Men Who Have Sex With Men) Study which demonstrated high efficacy of doxycycline for prevention of syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea among men who have sex with men and transwomen.

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 USAID-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 Coffin is Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and the founding Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) HIV Drug Resistance Program, to which he still serves as a consultant.  He has contributed more than 125 articles to the scientific literature, largely on the subjects of mechanisms of replication of retroviruses and interaction of HIV with its human host.

Research Focus: Obtaining a better understanding of the interaction of retroviruses with their host cells and organisms

Dr Connick is chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson. She has served in various leadership roles with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Antiviral Drug Advisory Committee, the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS Immunology and Pathogenesis Study Section, and the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG).

Research Focus: Immunopathogenesis of HIV-1 infection, including HIV cure strategies and the mechanisms underlying sex differences in HIV infection; cardiovascular disease in HIV infection; and the efficacy of mRNA vaccines in preventing asymptomatic COVID-19 infection and transmission

Dr Currier is a Professor of Medicine, Executive Vice Chair for Research, Codirector of the Center for AIDS Research and Education (CARE), Michael and Sue Steinberg Chair in Global AIDS Research in the Department of Medicine, at University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). She is Chair of the NIH-sponsored ACTG and Principal Investigator of the Leadership Operations Center (LOC) for the ACTG based at UCLA.

Research Focus: Long-term complications of HIV disease with an emphasis on sex differences and antiretroviral therapy, 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 antiretrovirals, and the prevention of HIV infection

Dr Eron is a member of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases and a tenured Professor of Medicine at University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  He is the Principal Investigator for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded UNC Global HIV treatment and prevention Clinical Trials Unit and an active investigator in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) and the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN).

Research Focus: Antiretroviral therapy for the treatment and prevention of HIV-1 infection and on novel clinical interventions to impact the HIV-1 reservoir and enhance HIV-specific immunity

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) and the Medical Director of the HIV Clinic (“Ward 86”) at San Francisco General Hospital.  She directs the annual “Mentoring the Mentors” workshop to train HIV researchers nationwide and globally on tools and techniques of effective mentoring. She also serves as the Vice-Chair of the Antiretroviral Treatment Strategies group in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG).

Research Focus: HIV and women and adherence measurement in HIV treatment and prevention

Dr Günthard is Professor of Infectious Diseases in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology at University Hospital Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland. Since 2012, he has been President of the Swiss HIV Cohort Study, a long-term observational HIV cohort that started in 1988.

Research Focus: Antiretroviral treatment of HIV-1, emergence and transmission of HIV-1 drug resistance, studies of transmission biology and transmission of HIV-1 at the population level, HIV-host interactions with a focus on immune responses to HIV and the latent reservoir, and general aspects of primary HIV-1 infection

Dr Hatziioannou is Research Associate Professor at The Rockefeller University in New York, New York, where she researches mechanisms that lentiviruses use to overcome inhibitors in their natural hosts, novel animal models for HIV-1, and antibody-containing plasma from people had recovered from SARS-CoV-2.

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 Hunt is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Experimental Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Associate Chief for Research in the Zuckerberg San Francisco General (ZSFG)-UCSF Department of Medicine, and Co-Director of the UCSF-Bay Area Center for AIDS Research for Basic and Translational Science.

Research Focus: Causes and consequences of persistent immune activation in treated HIV, including its impact on aging-related complications and viral persistence, spanning pathogenesis-oriented observational studies and clinical trials

Dr Jao is a Professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and holds joint appointments in the Departments of Pediatric and Adult Infectious Diseases.  She is a co-principal investigator of the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study, as well as several NIH-funded cohorts in both the United States and sub-Saharan Africa.

Research Focus: Perinatal HIV, with a focus on the cardiometabolic complications of antiretroviral therapy in pregnant individuals with HIV and their children

Dr Kirchhoff is Professor of Virology and Director of the Institute of Molecular Virology in Ulm, Germany. In addition to his main research interests noted below, he is interested in the discovery of natural human factors that play a role in viral pathogenesis and transmission and in their optimization for novel therapeutic or preventive approaches.

Research Focus: Elucidate how primate lentiviruses manipulate the immune system, cross species barriers, and cause disease

Dr Landovitz is a Professor of Medicine and Interim Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California Los Angeles.  His work includes clinical trials, implementation science, and social science. He has a particular research focus in agents for preexposure prophylaxis, including long-acting and extended-release agents and their advantages and liabilities.

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 Michigan Medical. She is also the Director of Clinical Hepatology and Assistant Dean for Clinical Research at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has published more than 600 papers on viral hepatitis and liver diseases, is the coauthor of 5 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. A recipient of numerous awards for research, mentoring, and service to the scientific community, Dr Lok was president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in 2017 and has served as an editor for journals including Hepatology, Journal of Viral Hepatitis, Gastroenterology, and Hepatology Communication.

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 TB, and antiretroviral therapy strategies.

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

Dr Mermin is the Director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), where he oversees the agency’s domestic research, policy, and prevention activities for these diseases. He previously served as Director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Director of CDC-Kenya, and Director of CDC-Uganda. His research interests include evaluation and implementation of practical, cost-effective interventions; analysis of surveillance and program data; modeling and operational aspects of resource allocation; and 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 principal investigator of L’Agence nationale de recherche sur le SIDA et les hépatites virales (ANRS), a research network funded by France that focusses on the treatment and prevention of HIV, hepatitis, and other sexually transmitted infections in France, Africa, Southeast Asia and South America. His work includes clinical trials of antiretroviral drug efficacy, use of antiretrovirals for preexposure prophylaxis, and strategies to reduce the burden of STIs.

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

Dr Moore is Reader and Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation South African Research Chair of Virus-Host Dynamics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), and Honorary Senior Scientist in Virus-Host Dynamics at Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Durban, South Africa. She obtained her MSc in Microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand, studying gastroenteritis-associated adenoviruses. She then earned her PhD in Virology at the University of London (studying the hepatitis B virus) in 2003 before returning to South Africa to join NICD/WITS.

Research Focus: HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies and their interplay with the evolving virus

Dr Mujugira is a Senior Research Scientist at Makerere University Infectious Diseases Institute and an Affiliate Assistant Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington. With over 18 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. 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 combination HIV prevention tools (HIV self-testing, sexually transmitted infection self-sampling, PrEP, and antiretroviral treatment) to reduce HIV incidence.

Research Focus: HIV prevention to reduce HIC incidence

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 Stuart 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

Dr Ndhlovu is a Professor of Immunology in Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Neuroscience at the Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine. His team combines immunology, virology, and epigenetic methods exploring molecular mechanism of HIV pathogenesis and persistence through preclinical and clinical investigations, and has expanded research efforts towards finding an HIV cure. He is Co-Principal Investigator of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Martin Delaney Collaboratory for HIV Cure “HOPE” and two National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded SCORCH (Single Cell Opioid Responses in the Context of HIV) programs, documenting single cell substance use disorder responses in the brain in the setting of HIV. He is a long-standing member of the International Neuro-HIV Cure Consortium and was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. A new member of the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Committee, he also serves as Co-Editor in Chief of the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses and as Chair of the American foundation for AIDS Research Scientific Advisory Committee.

Research Focus: Confronting the challenges of HIV and aging and developing specific strategies to prevent, slow, or eliminate complications associated with HIV

Prof Nelson is the Independence Foundation Professor of Nursing and Professor of Public Health at Yale University. He is also the Director of the Justice, Community Capacity, and Equity Core in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale.  His research has been sponsored by the HIV Prevention Trials Network/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Nursing Research, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Canadian Institute of Health Research, and Grand Challenges Canada. Prof Nelson is an elected Fellow in the New York Academy of Medicine and in the American Academy of Nursing.

Research Focus: Developing and testing strategies to optimize the equitable implementation of HIV preexposure prophylaxis and the treatment of HIV and sexually transmitted infections in Black communities in the United States and Canada, as well as in sexually minoritized communities in East and West Africa

Dr Okoye is a Research Associate Professor at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute (VGTI) at Oregon Health and Science University, with a joint faculty appointment at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. He holds a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Nigeria Nsukka and an MSc in Biotechnology from Nottingham Trent University. He achieved his PhD in Virology from the University of Glasgow, studying papillomavirus capsid proteins. Dr Okoye co-leads DARE RF2 (Delaney AIDS Research Enterprise – Research Focus 2), with the goal of developing combinatorial therapeutic strategies to establish durable post-ART viral remission.

Research Focus: Nonhuman primate models to understand the barriers to HIV eradication during antiretroviral therapy (ART)

Dr Reisner is Associate Professor (tenured) in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and affiliated faculty in the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health. He serves as Director of Transgender Health Research at The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health, and has an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Trained as a social and psychiatric epidemiologist, he has co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles in LGBTQ health, was a contributing author to the the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care for care of transgender and gender diverse populations globally, was profiled in the Lancet in 2016 as a global leader in transgender health.

Research Focus: Health disparities in sexual and gender minority populations, the epidemiology of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and psychiatric epidemiology of mental health and substance use risks and resilience across adolescence and young adulthood.

Dr Richman is Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Medicine at University of California San Diego in San Diego, California. He held the Florence Seeley Riford Chair in AIDS Research until going Active Emeritus in 2019. He currently is actively maintaining a research laboratory, is Director of the UC San Diego HIV Institute, and Co-Director of the San Diego Center for AIDS Research. 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. Dr. Richman’s 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. He helped 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 the strategy of rendering HIV RNA undetectable. HIV drug resistance was originally recognized in his laboratory in 1988. 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. Dr. Richman has made major clinical and laboratory contributions to the field of HIV/AIDS, which collectively represent a model of translational medical research.

Research Focus: The natural history and molecular pathogenesis of HIV, the latent HIV reservoir, and efforts to eradicate it.

Dr Scarsi is a Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), with appointments in both the College of Pharmacy and College of Medicine. Dr Scarsi is an active investigator in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), where she is a scientific member of the Women’s Health Collaborative Science Group and a past member of the Tuberculosis Transformative Science Group. Locally, Dr Scarsi is a clinical consultant in the UNMC HIV clinic. Nationally, 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: Optimizing therapies for persons living with HIV, with an emphasis on sex/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, and the herpes group viruses, and the use of bacteriophages to treat multidrug resistant bacterial infections

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 is also an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco. She has been working in Asia for more than 20 years, conducting clinical and epidemiology HIV research in collaboration with a research network stretching across more than 50 institutions in 13 countries.

Research Focus: Infant, childhood, adolescent, and adulthood HIV clinical research and epidemiology.

Dr Spudich is Professor of Neurology and Chief of the Division of Neurological Infections and Global Neurology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She collaborates with colleagues from multiple disciplines in clinical and translational studies based in urban centers in the United States and in international settings, and cares for people living with HIV with neurologic disorders.

Research Focus: HIV in the nervous system, particularly on effects of acute HIV infection and antiretroviral treatment on HIV neuropathogenesis and persistence.

Dr. David Lee Thomas Stanhope Bayne-Jones Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He is trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases and cares for patients with chronic viral hepatitis. From 2006-2022, Dr. Thomas served as the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Stanhope Bayne-Jones Professor of Medicine. He remains a Professor of Medicine in the School of Medicine and of Epidemiology in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a co-director of the Center for AIDS Research Clinical Core. He earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry, in 1982, and his medical degree, in 1986, from West Virginia University. He then completed his medical training and residency at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, before coming to Johns Hopkins as a research fellow in infectious diseases. He went on to earn his Master of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He joined the faculty at both schools, the School of Medicine in 1993 and Public Health in 1994.

Research Focus: Viral hepatitis, especially in HIV/hepatitis C virus (HCV)-coinfected individuals.

Annemarie Wensing, MD, PhD 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 (IAS–USA). 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 and on transmission and mechanisms of HIV drug-resistance and since recently also on SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis.

James A. Hoxie, MD

Angela D. Kashuba, PharmD

John W. Mellors, MD

Juergen K. Rockstroh, MD

Peter Reiss, MD, PhD

Dawn Averitt began working in the HIV/AIDS arena in 1993, having been diagnosed with HIV in 1988. In addition to being the mother of 3 daughters, she has founded 2 nonprofit organizations, WISE (Women’s Information Service and Exchange) in 1995 and The Well Project (www.thewellproject.org) in 2002, to improve the lives of women living with HIV and AIDS. As a social justice advocate for people living with HIV and AIDS, Dawn also launched a think tank in 2003 now called the Women’s Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS (WRI), which drives “more, better, faster” research in women and has been responsible for many notable achievements, such as facilitating the GRACE Study, building network collaborations, guiding FDA labeling decisions, and shaping research and policy priorities at the NIH. In the past 25+ years, she has developed programs to increase awareness, accelerate testing, provide access to treatment, disseminate information, and expand clinical trials. Dawn has also served as a member of the Perinatal HIV Guidelines Committee from 2007 to 2012, the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council (OARAC) from 2008 to 2012, and 2 terms on the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) from 2010 to 2015 during the Obama administration.

Luciana P. Kamel, MA

Luciana Kamel is Senior Community Engagement Coordinator to research projects at the Instituto Nacional de Infectologia Evandro Chagas / Fundação Oswaldo Cruz in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a Community Partner representative with the Office of HIV/AIDS Network Coordination (HANC) and part of the CP Executive committee. She is also part of the HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Strategic Working Group (SWG). Ms Kamel earned her Master of Science in Psycho-sociology and Community Social Ecology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (UFRJ). She received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UFRJ and Bachelor of Arts in Law from the Estacio de Sá University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has a post-graduation degree in Science Communication at Casa Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz, Brazil. Ms Kamel is currently a PhD candidate in Collective Health at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). She has been supporting multidisciplinary HIV prevention and treatment clinical research studies with the US NIH Division of AIDS (DAIDS)-funded HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), HIV vaccine trials network (HVTN) and AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG).

Grace Kumwenda, MPH

Grace Kumwenda works as a Regional Program Manager at AVAC supporting partners in Africa to implement advocacy and health equity programs targeting Adolescent Girls and Young Women and other populations to amplify community voices in HIV prevention research. She is passionate about equity and girls and women’s leadership. With over 10 years strategic leadership experience, she serves on several boards, including African Women HIV Prevention Community Accountability Board, Girls Empowerment Malawi (GEM) and Elevate Her-Malawi. She has also served as Chief-of-Party leading the implementation of PEPFAR funded Local Endeavors for HIV Prevention and Treatment Intervention and DREAMS under Pakachere Institute for Health and Development Communication, shaping organizational vision and strategic plan and supporting business development and other core functions of the organization.

Ms Kumwenda holds of Master of Arts Degree from University of the Witwatersrand (2007) and a Bachelor of Arts Degree (Humanities) from the University of Malawi (2005), and is currently studying towards a Master of Science in International Public Health with Liverpool John Moores University. She has been awarded several fellowships over the years including AVAC bio-medical prevention advocate fellow (2017), International AIDS Society HIV Cure Academy Fellow (2019), Perennial Leadership Fellow (2021), and Global Change Leadership Fellow (2015).

Udom Likhitwonnawut, BS

Udom Likhitwonnawut is a consultant for AVAC on community engagement in Chiang Mai, Thailand. His responsibilities include 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 also served as a pro bono advisor for the Institute of HIV Research and Innovation and for the Vaccine Trial Center with Mahidol University; as a member of the National Subcommittee on HIV Vaccine Development, representing the Thai NGO Coalition on AIDS; and as a consultant on CAB constitution for the Community Engagement team of the Retrovirology Department of Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science.

Devan Nambiar, MSc

Devan Nambiar is the Manager of Capacity Building & Talent Development at Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance (GMSH). He draws from over 30 years of HIV activism, advocacy, and service. His expertise includes developing and leading education and training initiatives to improve queer and trans health, directed to social service agencies and healthcare providers, to increase their capacity to serve queer and trans communities. This includes publications, workshops, continuing medical education (CME) training modules, seminars, and involvement in 5 research studies including mpox, human papillomavirus (HPV) and anal cancer, doxycycline, and 2SLGBTQ health education. He provides consultancy services at Global Health Integrative Science on 2SLGBTQI cultural and clinical competencies.

Jim Pickett

Ntando Yola