Quarraisha Abdool Karim

President

Quarraisha Abdool Karim is a South African infectious diseases epidemiologist and global health leader, and president of the World Academy of Sciences. She co-founded the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa, where she is associate scientific director and John C. Martin chair in global health, and is professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University and pro vice-chancellor for health sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Over three decades she has pioneered innovations that transformed HIV prevention in resource-constrained settings. As co-leader of the CAPRISA 004 trial she showed that tenofovir gel could reduce HIV acquisition in women, establishing proof of concept for antiretroviral-based prevention. Her research has also advanced understanding of genital inflammation and of HIV and tuberculosis co-infection.