A distinguished career
● Quarraisha Abdool Karim,
PhD, associate scientific director of Caprisa, is an infectious diseases epidemiologist whose main research interests are in understanding: the evolving HIV epidemic in SA; factors influencing acquisition of HIV infection in adolescent girls; and sustainable strategies to introduce antiretroviral therapy in resource-constrained settings.
● She holds professorships in clinical epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, US, and in public health at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
● She is also a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and visiting lecturer at Harvard University. Since 1998 she has played a central role in building the science base in Southern Africa through the Columbia University-Southern African Fogarty Aids International Training and Research Programme, which has trained more than 600 scientists in Southern Africa.
● She was the principal investigator of the landmark Caprisa 004 tenofovir gel trial which provided proof of concept for microbicides, highlighted by Science magazine as one of the top 10 scientific breakthroughs in 2010.
● Professor Abdool Karim is currently chair of the South African National Aids Council Prevention Technical Task
Team, a member of the UNAids scientific expert panel and scientific adviser to the executive director of UNAids. She is an advisory board member of the Higher Education and Training HIV/Aids Programme, scientific advisory board member of the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), chair of the Pepfar adolescent girls and young women expert working group, a member of the HIV centre strategic advisory committee and the NIH OAR microbicides planning group. She is vicepresident (Southern African region) of the African Academy of Sciences.
● She has been awarded the TWAS-Lenovo science prize, the SA Medical Research Council scientific merit award, the Science-for-Society gold medal ASSAF Award, the Order of Mapungubwe: Bronze, and the African Union Kwame Nkrumah science award.