Scientific Program Committee

Landon Myer, MD, PhD, Chair

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 research focuses on women’s, maternal, and child health in the context of HIV across southern 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Ruanne Barnabas, MD, PhD

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 STI treatment and prevention. She is particularly interested in novel approaches that increase access to services. She led the Delivery Optimization for Antiretroviral therapy (DO ART) 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. She is the Principal Investigator of the KEN SHE Study to assess the impact of single-dose human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in Kenya. Recently, her work has extended to COVID-19 prevention within households. Her work aims to identify effective and scalable HIV, HPV, and infectious disease treatment and prevention strategies to increase access across diverse communities and promote equity in health.

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 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 coled 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 coleading 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.

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.

Carlos del Rio, MD

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-CDC HIV Clinical Trials Unit. His research focuses on the early diagnosis, access to care, compliance with antiretrovirals, and the prevention of HIV infection. 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. Besides Atlanta, he conducts HIV research and training in Kenya, Ethiopia, Thailand and the Country of Georgia.

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.

Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH

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. Her research focuses on HIV and women and adherence measurement in HIV treatment and prevention. She directs the annual “Mentoring the Mentors” workshop to train HIV researchers nationwide and globally on tools and techniques to improve their mentoring skills from the UCSF CFAR. She served as the Co-Chair of the 2020 International AIDS Conference.

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 general aspects of primary HIV-1 infection.

Theodora Hatziioannou, PhD

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.

Sharon L. Hillier, PhD

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.

James A. Hoxie, MD

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.

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.

Jennifer Jao, MD, MPH

Dual certified in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Dr Jao is an Associate Professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in the Departments of Pediatric and Adult Infectious Diseases whose research focus is HIV maternal child health. She obtained her MD at the Medical College of Georgia and completed an Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. She trained in Infectious Diseases and obtained her MPH degree at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

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 UNC 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.

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.

Raphael J. Landovitz, MD

Dr Landovitz is Professor of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles. His research interests include the optimization of the use of antiviral agents for both HIV therapeutics and HIV prevention. 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.

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.

Jean-Michel Molina, MD, PhD

Dr Molina is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Paris, and Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Saint-Louis and Lariboisière Hospitals in Paris, France. The primary focus of his research is antiretroviral therapy for treatment and prevention of HIV infection in adults, with an interest in other sexually transmitted infections. He is principal investigator of the Agence nationale de recherches sur le SIDA (ANRS), a research network funded by France, focusing 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 PrEP, and strategies to reduce the burden of STIs.

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.

Stuart J.D. Neil, PhD

Dr Stuart Neil is a Professor of Virology at King’s College London. His research interests include HIV cell biology and immunology, antiviral restriction and Ebola. He is a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow and was appointed Professor of Virology in 2015.

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 the 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.

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.

David L. Thomas, MD

Dr Thomas is Stanhope Bayne-Jones Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. His clinical and research interests are focused on viral hepatitis, especially in HIV/HCV-coinfected individuals.

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.

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.

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.

Dawn Averitt

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.

Jim Pickett

Jim Pickett is the former Senior Director of Prevention Advocacy and Gay Men’s Health at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. Having cofounded the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA) in 2005, he continues to lead the network’s efforts to support safe, effective, acceptable, accessible, and desirable microbicides, in addition to a wide array of other short- and long-acting, systemic and nonsystemic, user-controlled, behaviorally congruent, multipurpose prevention options. He leads the Illinois PrEP Working Group and directs Chicago’s globally acclaimed PrEP4Love social marketing campaign. POZ magazine has honored him in 3 of their “Top 100” lists, calling him a “soldier… instrumental in fighting for much-needed new prevention methods, undeterred by subjects many would prefer to ignore.” He has been living with HIV since 1995.

Ntando Yola

Ntando Yola is the Community Engagement Lead at the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre, the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He also serves as the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) Community Working Group Co-Chair. He has worked for almost 15 years as a community mobilizer and advocate in HIV trials, most of which have been HIV prevention research. He is a Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention’s (AVAC) alumni fellow and a member of various national, regional, and global platforms that champion communities’ interests through advocacy and engagement. The work he does is motivated by outcomes of effectively involving communities and seeing them take ownership in the efforts that seek to control the AIDS epidemic, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.