SPEAKERS
Dr. Anita Marias
Dr. Anita Marais is an HPTN Scholar and a sub-investigator for HPTN, working on HPTN 084. She is currently based at the Perinatal HIV Research Unit in Soweto, South Africa. Her research interests include high-risk groups, namely women and men who have sex with men (MSM). Dr. Marais' Scholar project focuses on factors that may influence the risk-taking behavior in MSM and transgender women.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, where he oversees an extensive research portfolio focused on infectious and immune-mediated diseases. As the long-time chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, Dr. Fauci has made many seminal contributions in basic and clinical research and is one of the world’s most-cited biomedical scientists. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Betsy Herold
Dr. Betsy Herold is chief of pediatric infectious diseases and vice chair for research at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York. Dr. Herold is also a professor of pediatrics, microbiology, and immunology, and obstetrics and gynecology, and women’s health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Her research focus is prevention of HIV and HSV through development of vaccines and PrEP as well as the impact of the vaginal microbiome on mucosal immunity, STI risk and PrEP PK/PD.
Dr. David Serwadda
Dr. David Serwadda serves as HPTN's international lead investigator. He is a professor of infectious diseases and former Dean of the School of Public Health at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Dr. Serwadda has worked in HIV-related research and prevention since the mid-1980s and was among the first to report AIDS in Uganda. He is a senior investigator on the Rakai Health Sciences Program and is the Ugandan principal investigator in the ongoing NIH-funded trial of male circumcision for HIV prevention. The recipient of numerous awards, Dr. Serwadda is a JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health Scholar, a fellow of the Uganda National Academy of Science, and a member of the Institute of Medicine.
Dr. Deborah Donnell
Dr. Deborah Donnell is the principal investigator of the HPTN's Statistical and Data Management Center (SDMC). The SDMC oversees the Network's statistical design and analysis and data management operations. In addition, Dr. Donnell is a professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and an expert in the design of HIV prevention trials, especially related to pre-exposure prophylaxis.
Dr. Derek Dangerfield II
Dr. Derek Dangerfield II is an HPTN Scholar and an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore, Maryland. His research targets ways to promote sexual health among sexual minority men. Dr. Dangerfield’s research for the HPTN included a latent class analysis to identify profiles of sexual risk and PrEP initiation among Black sexual minority men in HPTN 073. He is also supported by an NIMH K01 mentored research award to design an intervention to increase PrEP initiation among Black sexual minority men in Baltimore.
Elzette Rousseau
Elzette Rousseau is an HPTN Scholar and a socio-behavioral scientist at Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, and has been involved in multiple demonstration projects of PrEP delivery to adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), including differentiated and integrated PrEP delivery in South Africa. She is also a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cape Town, and her research focuses on the role of gender and constrained choice in PrEP uptake and continuation in AGYW.
Dr. Fei Gao
Dr. Fei Gao is a biostatistician who develops novel statistical methods for biomedical and public health studies. Her research interests include survival analysis and semiparametric inference, with application in HIV/AIDS and cancer. Dr. Gao is also interested in the design and analysis of clinical trials and causal inference.
Dr. Jim Hughes
Dr. Jim Hughes is a biostatistician who applies statistical methods to problems in HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. He specializes in the design of randomized controlled trials involving clusters or groups of subjects, including stepped wedge cluster randomized trials. Dr. Hughes also studies statistical methods for dealing with misclassified data.
Dr. Julie Pulerwitz
Dr. Julie Pulerwitz is the director of the Population Council’s HIV and AIDS program. She provides leadership for a portfolio of research that generates evidence to inform HIV programs and policies worldwide. An accomplished socio-behavioral scientist, Pulerwitz has more than 20 years of experience in implementation science and impact evaluations, with expertise in gender and male engagement, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), stigma, and social and behavior change.
Dr. Kate Mitchell
Dr. Kate Mitchell is an advanced research fellow at Imperial College London and a senior mathematical modeller for the HPTN Modelling Centre. She uses mathematical modelling of HIV transmission among key populations to estimate the impact of different HIV prevention interventions and inform and interpret clinical trials.
Dr. LaRon Nelson
Dr. LaRon Nelson is an HPTN Scholar and co-leads HPTN 096. He is also the inaugural associate dean for global health and equity and an Independence Foundation associate professor of nursing at Yale School of Nursing. Dr. Nelson also oversees the Office of Global Health and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Dr. Lisa Haddad
Dr. Lisa Haddad is the medical director for the Center for Biomedical Research at the Population Council. She leads the clinical development efforts to advance the Center’s sexual and reproductive health product portfolio, including novel contraceptives and multi-purpose prevention technologies.
Dr. Mark Marzinke
Dr. Mark Marzinke is co-director of the HPTN Laboratory Center (LC) and leads the pharmacology core of the HPTN LC. He is also an associate professor of pathology and medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. In addition, Dr. Marzinke directs the Clinical Pharmacology Analytical Laboratory and oversees clinical laboratory testing in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Core Laboratories.
Dr. Matthew Hall
Dr. Matthew Hall is a senior researcher at the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford in England. His research revolves around the development of new methods for molecular epidemiology and their application to pathogens, including HIV and SARS-CoV-2.
Dr. Mia Moore
Dr. Mia Moore is a mathematician with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, specializing in model-based counterfactuals for clinical trials and projecting the population-level impacts of prevention interventions. Her current work focuses on HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis and vaccination against COVID-19. Previously, Dr. Moore worked at the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta, studying heterogeneity in the immune response to infection.
Mia Ryan Porter
Mia Ryan Porter, a member of the HPTN 083 and HPTN 091 community working groups, is a lay health promoter and outreach worker at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). She is the founder and executive director of Sister to Sister, a support group for trans-binary and non-binary individuals and allies.
Dr. Myron S. Cohen
Dr. Myron S. Cohen, an HPTN principal investigator, is director of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. He is also the Yeargan-Bate Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology, and Immunology and Epidemiology at UNC. Dr. Cohen was the architect and leader of HPTN 052, the study that demonstrated successful suppression of HIV replication with antiretroviral agents prevents transmission. Subsequently, the earliest possible treatment of HIV for individual and community benefit became a global standard of care. In 2011, Dr. Cohen received the North Carolina Science Award, the state’s highest civilian honor. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has been part of the HPTN since its inception.
Dr. Nirupama Sista
Dr. Nirupama Sista, director of the HPTN Leadership and Operations Center, leads the development and implementation of all ongoing HPTN research studies. She also focuses on strategic partnerships with funding agencies and collaborative partners. Dr. Sista is Director, Research and Development and Director of the CoVPN Operations Center at FHI 360 with more than 20 years of experience in the academic, pharmaceutical, and non-profit sectors.
Nora Howell
Nora Howell, a member of the HPTN 083 and HPTN 091 community working groups, is a senior outreach specialist at ICAP Harlem Prevention Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. She conducts community outreach and recruitment activities designed to build awareness, interest, and participation in clinical research initiatives at Harlem Prevention Center in New York.
Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim
Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim is a member of the HPTN Leadership Group, Executive Committee, Performance Evaluation Committee, and Manuscript Review Committee. She is also an associate scientific director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and the CAPRISA Clinical Trials Unit's principal investigator. Dr. Abdool Karim was an HPTN co-principal investigator from 2006-2012.
Dr. Rachel Baggaley
Dr. Rachel Baggaley is the team lead for testing, prevention, and populations in the Global HIV, hepatitis, and STI programs at World Health Organization in Geneva. This work includes supporting global normative guidance across these areas, including biomedical prevention interventions such as PrEP, and considering how these can be implemented strategically, safely, and acceptably in low- and middle-income countries.
Dr. Raphael Landovitz
Dr. Raphael Landovitz, the principal investor for HPTN 083, is a professor of medicine at the UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research & Education in Los Angeles. His research agenda focuses on optimizing the use of antiretroviral medications for HIV treatment and HIV prevention. In addition, Dr. Landovitz has led combination prevention intervention studies and projects using post-exposure (PEP) and pre-exposure (PrEP) strategies for men who have sex with men. He was awarded the HIVMA HIV Research Award in 2017 and the AIDS Clinical Trials Group’s John Carey Young Investigator Award in 2010.
Dr. Raquel Ramos
Dr. Raquel Ramos is an HPTN Scholar and an assistant professor at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing in New York. Her Scholars project examines whether perceived autonomy support and coordination quality are associated with PrEP discontinuation in Black sexual minority men. Dr. Ramos’ research focuses on using informatics-based approaches to prevent HIV in sexual minority men of color.
Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky
Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky is the 19th director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the ninth administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. She is an influential scholar whose pioneering research has helped advance the national and global response to HIV/AIDS. Dr. Walensky is also a well-respected expert on the value of cost-effectiveness and equitable distribution of testing, treatment, and resources. She is a past Chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health, chair-elect of the HIV Medical Association, and previously served as an advisor to both the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Rodman Turpin
Dr. Rodman Turpin is an HPTN Scholar and research assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, and a core research scientist with the UMD Prevention Research Center. His research primarily focuses on social determinants of health impacting the mental and sexual health of Black sexual minority men, particularly related to HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention. Dr. Turpin’s HPTN Scholars project focuses on Black men who have sex with men in the HPTN 061 study, examining pathways from experienced homophobia to internalized homophobia and subsequent sexual risk behavior using latent class analysis.
Dr. Rogers Sekabira
Dr. Rogers Sekabira is and HPTN Scholar and a pharmacist of record for the Baylor-Uganda Clinical Research Site in Uganda and HPTN scholar for the 2019-2020 cycle. His Scholar project is focused on “PK-PD Relationship of Antiretroviral Drugs dosed for PrEP in Ex-vivo HIV -1 Infection” under the mentorship of Dr. Craig W. Hendrix, professor of Medicine, Pharmacology, Molecular Science and Epidemiology at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Dr. Sinead Delany-Moretlwe
Dr. Sinead Delany-Moretlwe, HPTN 084 protocol chair, is a research professor and research director at Wits RHI at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. A South African-born medical doctor, her research has focused on the intersections between sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV, especially in adolescents. She has worked on several phase III trials of new HIV prevention technologies, including PrEP.
Dr. Steve Shoptaw
Dr. Steven Shoptaw is protocol co-chair for HPTN 094 and a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) departments of Family Medicine and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and professor (Hon.) in Psychiatry at the University of Cape Town.
Dr. Susan Eshleman
Dr. Susan Eshleman is the principal investigator of the HPTN Laboratory Center (LC) and the director of the virology core of the HTPN LC. She is also a professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. In addition, Dr. Eshleman directs three laboratories at Johns Hopkins University and is active in basic, translational, and clinical research related to HIV prevention.
Dr. Sybil Hosek
Dr. Sybil Hosek, protocol chair for HPTN 083-01 and HPTN 084-01, is a clinical adolescent psychologist at Stroger Hospital of Cook County and an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Disease at Rush University in Chicago. Her research interests are focused on HIV prevention among adolescents and young adults.
Dr. Wafaa M. El-Sadr
Dr. Wafaa M. El-Sadr, an HPTN principal investigator, is director of ICAP and professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. She is an HIV research pioneer renowned for her groundbreaking work in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Dr. El-Sadr has a tireless commitment to underserved populations both in the U.S. and around the world. She is a public health leader who was among the first to incorporate research with service delivery, push for community partnerships in research, and advance efforts to translate research findings into programs. Dr. El-Sadr is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2008