Program Committee Chairs
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-Womens Research Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The primary focus of her research is reproductive infectious diseases, with an emphasis on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. She is Principal Investigator of the Microbicide Trials Network, 1 of 5 clinical trials networks funded by the NIH, focused on the treatment and prevention of HIV. 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.
Elaine J. Abrams, MD, Vice Chair
Dr Abrams is Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center and Senior Research Director at the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP) in New York, New York. Her research interests focus on the prevention and treatment of HIV infection in infants, children, and adolescents. Her work includes clinical trials of antiretroviral drug efficacy, testing strategies to optimize treatment outcomes, and evaluating models of HIV care and service delivery.
James A. Hoxie, MD, Vice Chair
Dr Hoxie is Professor of Medicine in the Hematology-Oncology Division at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His research interests include the basic mechanisms of HIV and SIV entry and interactions with CD4 and cellular coreceptors and understanding how the viral envelope glycoprotein contributes to immunodeficiency and evasion from host immune responses in viral pathogenesis. He is also Director of the Penn Center for AIDS Research and has a long-standing interest in interdisciplinary approaches to address the growing public health burden of HIV-associated malignancies.
Program Committee Members
Adaora Adimora, MD
Dr Adimora is Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of HIV and STDs among minority populations, with particular attention to the roles of social, political, and economic factors in vulnerability to HIV and related outcomes. She is Principal Investigator at the Women’s Interagency HIV Study’s UNC site.
Galit Alter, PhD
Dr Alter is Associate Professor of Medicine at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Harvard University, in Boston, Massachusetts, where she studies the antiviral and antimicrobial role of antibodies against a spectrum of infections, including HIV, as well as the pathways by which protective humoral immune responses may be delivered via vaccination or through the delivery of monoclonal therapeutics.
Katharine J. Bar, MD
Dr Bar is a physician-scientist who studies the basic mechanisms and translational impact of HIV transmission, pathogenesis, and persistence. Her 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.
Constance A. Benson, MD
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. Most recently her research has focused on the 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.
Susan P. Buchbinder, MD
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 focuses her research on risk factors for HIV acquisition and interventions to prevent HIV infection, including HIV vaccines, preexposure prophylaxis, behavioral interventions, rectal microbicides, and combination modalities. She serves in leadership positions in the HIV Vaccine Trials Network and the HIV Prevention Trials Network and has participated in numerous NIH and UCSF advisory committees.
Connie L. Celum, MD, MPH
Dr Celum is Professor of Global Health and Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology, and Director of the International Clinical Research Center 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 prevention. She has led multi-center 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 antiretroviral prophylaxis among HIV serodiscordant couples in Kenya and Uganda and a demonstration project of antiretroviral-based prevention in serodiscordant couples in Kenya and Uganda (the Partners Demo project). Dr Celum is co-leading implementation science research about PrEP implementation for young women in Kenya and South Africa (3P and POWER studies), and combination HIV prevention studies with decentralized antiretroviral therapy initiation in Uganda and South Africa (the DO-ART study).
Richard E. Chaisson, MD
Dr Chaisson is Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and International Health, Director of the Center for Tuberculosis Research, and Director of the Center for AIDS Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He is Chair of the Tuberculosis Transformative Science Section of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), and his research interests focus on tuberculosis and HIV infection, including global epidemiology, clinical trials, diagnostics, and public health interventions.
Nicolas Chomont, PhD
Dr Chomont is Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Université de Montréal–CHUM Research Center in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His research focuses on the characterization of the reservoirs for HIV during antiretroviral therapy. Dr Chomont is overseeing 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.
John M. Coffin, PhD
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. His research interests revolve around obtaining a better understanding of the interaction of retroviruses with their host cells and organisms. 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.
Judith S. Currier, MD
Dr Currier is Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, and Codirector of the Center for AIDS Research and Education (CARE) at University of California Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California. She is Vice Chair of the NIH-sponsored ACTG. Her research has focused on long-term complications of HIV disease with an emphasis on sex differences and antiretroviral therapy, cardiovascular disease, and women’s health.
François Dabis, MD, PhD
Dr Dabis is a physician and Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health (ISPED) at the University of Bordeaux, France. He has been Director of the French National AIDS and Viral Hepatitis Research Agency (ANRS) since March 2017. From 2001 to 2016, he led the HIV, Cancer, and Global Health research team within INSERM U1219, the Epidemiology Research Centre at ISPED. Dr Dabis has 30 years of experience in HIV epidemiology and global health research. He has published 720 papers and 2 leading textbooks in field epidemiology. He is the Co-Primary Investigator of the ANRS 12249 TasP trial recently completed in rural South Africa and the Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded IeDEA West Africa Collaboration.
Wafaa M. El-Sadr, MD, MPH
Dr El-Sadr is Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at Columbia University in New York, New York, and the founder and Director of ICAP at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, which is engaged in the design implementation and scale-up of HIV and related programs and research globally. Her research interests include prevention and management of HIV and aspects of implementation science that aim at generating knowledge to advance the health of populations.
Joseph J. Eron, Jr, MD
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 at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His research focuses on 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. He is the Principal Investigator for the NIH-funded UNC Global HIV treatment and prevention Clinical Trials Unit and an active investigator in the ACTG and the HIV Prevention Trials Network.
Huldrych F. Günthard, MD
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. His research focuses on 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 on general aspects of primary HIV-1 infection.
Timothy Hallett, PhD
Dr Hallett is Professor of Global Health in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London in London, England. His work centers on the development and application of mathematical models for interpreting surveillance data, analyzing trials, and planning interventions. He is Director of the HIV Modelling Consortium and Cochair of the UNAIDS Reference Group on Estimates, Modelling, and Projections.
Diane V. Havlir, MD
Dr Havlir is Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and Chief of the HIV/AIDS Division at San Francisco General Hospital in San Francisco, California. Her research focus includes HIV and tuberculosis, antiretroviral treatment strategies, and epidemiology of HIV drug resistance. She co-leads a long-standing multidisciplinary UCSF-Makerere University research collaboration focusing on epidemiologic, clinical, translational, and implementation science studies in HIV, TB, and malaria in Uganda.
Peter Hunt, MD
Dr Hunt is Associate Professor of Medicine in the HIV/AIDS division at the University of California San Francisco in San Francisco, California. He studies the causes and consequences of immune activation in treated HIV infection in the context of pathogenesis-oriented observational studies and clinical trials. He also serves as Vice Chair of the Inflammation and End-Organ Disease Transformative Science Group in the ACTG.
Angela Kashuba, BScPhm, PharmD
Dr Kashuba is the John A. and Deborah S. McNeill Jr. Distinguished Professor at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She is Chair of the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and Director of the University of North Carolina Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Clinical Pharmacology and Analytical Chemistry Core. She is also a Co-Investigator for the UNC K12 Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) grant and the TRACS KL2 program. She is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the UNC School of Medicine and is board certified by the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology.
Frank Kirchhoff, PhD
Dr Kirchhoff is Professor of Virology and Director of the Institute of Molecular Virology in Ulm, Germany. One of his main research interests is to elucidate how primate lentiviruses manipulate the immune system, cross species barriers, and cause disease. In addition, 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.
Dennis L. Kolson, MD, PhD
Dr Kolson is Professor of Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His basic research investigations are in the pathways of HIV-induced inflammation and immune activation in neurodegeneration and in identifying host targets for neuroprotection strategies. He serves as scientific advisor and Steering Committee member for the NIH National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium, and as the Penn AIDS Clinical Trials Unit site Neurology Principal Investigator for neuroprotection trials.
Richard A. Koup, MD
Dr Koup is Senior Investigator, Chief of the Immunology Laboratory, and Deputy Director of the Vaccine Research Center within NIAID in Bethesda, Maryland. His research involves the characterization of T- and B-cell factors involved in protective immunity against HIV infection to inform the development of vaccines. He has published more than 240 manuscripts on this and related topics and has mentored more than 35 graduate and postgraduate students in his career.
Hermione Lyall, MD
Dr Lyall is Pediatric Infectious Diseases consultant at Imperial Healthcare National Health Service Trust in London, England, where she leads the family HIV clinic at St Mary’s Hospital. Her main areas of research and education are preventing mother-to-child transmission and pediatric HIV. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Paediatric European Network for the Treatment of AIDS (PENTA), and she was the Principal Investigator on the recently completed KONCERT (Kaletra ONCE Daily Randomized Trial) trial (PENTA 18). She initiated the PENTA Tr@inforPedHIV online and residential HIV training course, which has helped train many health care workers around the world on HIV care in children.
James McIntyre, MBChB, FRCOG
Dr McIntyre is Executive Director of the Anova Health Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa, Honorary Professor in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town, and Vice Chair of the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) Network.
John W. Mellors, MD
Dr Mellors is tenured Professor of Medicine and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Executive Director of the HIV Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His areas of research interest are mechanisms of HIV drug resistance, antiretrovirals to prevent HIV-1 infection, persistent reservoirs of HIV-1, and innovative approaches to cure HIV infection. He directs the virology cores for the ACTG and the Microbicide Trials Network and is an elected member of the Association of American Professors.
Jonathan Mermin, MD, MPH
Dr Mermin is the Director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention at the US 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.
Penny Moore, PhD
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, and Honorary Senior Scientist in Virus-Host Dynamics at 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. Her current research focuses on HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies and their interplay with the evolving virus.
Landon Myer, MD, PhD
Dr Myer is Professor and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa, and Director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases Epidemiology and Research. Over the past 15 years, his program of research has focused on the impact of HIV on women’s, maternal, and child health across South and southern Africa, with projects integrating clinical science and health systems perspectives.
Andrew N. Phillips, PhD
Dr Phillips is Professor of Epidemiology at University College London in London, England, where he co-leads the Centre for Clinical Research, Epidemiology, Modeling and Evaluation in the Institute for Global Health. He is involved in several HIV -related research activities: modeling and health economic analyses to address public health questions in the context of high- and low-income settings, large observational cohorts of people with HIV, studies of transmission and sexual behavior, and randomized trials.
Peter Reiss, MD, PhD
Dr Reiss is Professor of Medicine in the Department of Global Health and Division of Infectious Diseases at Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is also Director of the Netherlands HIV Monitoring Foundation, which oversees the monitoring and evaluation of health outcomes in people with HIV in care in the Netherlands. He is the Principal Investigator of the AGEhIV Cohort Study, which studies the epidemiology and pathogenesis of noncommunicable comorbidity in relation to aging in HIV.
Douglas D. Richman, MD
Dr Richman is Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Medicine at University of California San Diego in San Diego, California. His laboratory currently focuses on the natural history and molecular pathogenesis of HIV in a cohort of acutely infected patients. Additional virologic investigations include studies of HIV drug resistance, the pathogenetic consequences of virus replication in anatomic compartments, viral latency, and eradication strategies.
Jürgen K. Rockstroh, MD
Dr Rockstroh is Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany. His research interests involve clinical trials in HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) therapy as well as pathogenesis of acute HCV infection, particularly in HIV coinfection. He is the current Chair for the European AIDS Clinical Society coinfection guidelines as well as Chair of hepatitis research within the European AIDS Treatment Network (NEAT) ID Foundation.
Robert T. Schooley, MD
Dr Schooley is Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at University of California San Diego in San Diego, California. His research interests are in the areas of HIV and HCV pathogenesis and therapy and in the development of novel diagnostic technologies.
Guido Silvestri, MD
Dr Silvestri is Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Chief of the Division of Microbiology and Immunology at the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. His research focuses on the pathogenesis, prevention, and therapy of HIV infection using nonhuman primate models. Key contributions to this area include the elucidation of the mechanisms responsible for the benign course of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection in natural hosts and the development of novel techniques to manipulate the immune system in vivo in nonhuman primates.
Annette H. Sohn, MD
Dr Sohn is the Director of the TREAT Asia program in Thailand, and Vice President of Global Initiatives of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. She is also an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco in San Francisco, California. She has been working in Asia for more than 10 years, conducting clinical and epidemiologic HIV research involving infants, children, adolescents, and adults, in collaboration with a research network stretching across 58 institutions in 13 countries.
Serena S. Spudich, MD, MA
Dr Spudich is Professor of Neurology and Chief of the Division of Neurological Infections and Global Neurology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Her research focuses on HIV in the nervous system, particularly on effects of acute HIV infection and antiretroviral treatment on HIV neuropathogenesis and persistence. 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.
Wesley I. Sundquist, PhD
Dr Sundquist is Cochair of Biochemistry at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Director of the NIH P50 Center for the Structural Biology of Cellular Host Elements in Egress, Trafficking, and Assembly of HIV (CHEETAH). His research focuses on the biochemistry, structural biology, and virology of HIV assembly, budding, and restriction, with a particular focus on host-virus interactions. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
David L. Thomas, MD
Dr Thomas is Stanhope Bayne-Jones Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. His clinical and research interests are focused on viral hepatitis, especially in HIV/HCV-coinfected individuals.