Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative

 

People - Researchers

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Cash is a Senior Lecturer on International Health at HSPH and the Principal Investigator of a NIH training grant on "Ethical Issues in International Health Research." This program explores differences between and within countries with regard to health research ethics and conducts training workshops. Topics covered in the workshops include informed consent, confidentiality, conflict of interest, investigator responsibilities to the study population, research in resource poor environments, and the development of ethical review committees.

Sofia Gruskin

Prof. Gruskin is Associate Professor of Health and Human Rights and Director of the Program on International Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her work emphasizes the conceptual, methodological, policy and practice implications of linking health to human rights, with particular attention to HIV/AIDS, women, children, gender issues, and vulnerable populations. She has extensive experience in research, training and programmatic work with nongovernmental, governmental and intergovernmental organizations working in the fields of health and human rights around the world. She has been particularly engaged in shaping the work of these organizations to fully reflect the integration of human rights into their work, as well as helping to conceptualize the ways in which human rights can impact the research agendas of academics and policy makers concerned with public health.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. De Gruttola is a Professor of Biostatistics at HSPH. His research activities focus on developments of statistical methods required for appropriate public health response to the AIDS epidemic. His work involves not only statistical methodology, but also public health surveillance systems, medical issues surrounding HIV infection, and concerns of communities most affected by the epidemic. The goals of his research include forecasting future AIDS incidence, developing strategies for clinical research on HIV infection, and evaluating the public health impact of antiviral treatment.

Abdoulaye Dieng Sarr

Dr. Dieng Sarr is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. His current research is the characterization of HIV-1 and HIV-2 primary and early infection in heterosexually infected individuals. Dr. Dieng Sarr served as the Coordinator of the National HIV/STD Sentinel Surveillance Program from 1989 - 1994 in Senegal. He serves as a Scientific Adviser for the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN), a collaborative program that oversees training, capacity building, research and policy efforts to develop evidence-based prevention and treatment programs in Nigeria.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Earls is a Professor of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is studying the psychosocial impacts of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on children. New studies are beginning in two locations in Tanzania to assess and monitor the health of orphaned children. He and colleagues are undertaking an analysis of the role of community attitudes and perceptions about the disease and its impact on children. The aim of his work is to devise more effective community-based interventions to support the well-being of children in the context of the AIDS epidemic, and by doing so to prevent institutionalization and homelessness.

Dr. Essex is a Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health, as well as Chair of the Harvard AIDS Initiative and of the Botswana-Harvard Partnership. As a virologist, he has concentrated on the evolution of different types of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa and on the relevance this has to issues of transmission, disease progression, drug resistance and vaccine design. His current research is based in Botswana and Tanzania. One project examines the influence of human genetic resistance on the risk for infection and the rate of disease progression for HIV 1C. Another area of research is the identification and characterization of those individuals most likely to transmit HIV through heterosexual or mother-to-infant transmission mechanisms.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Fawzi is a Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research examines the role of nutritional factors in the etiology of adverse health outcomes among populations in developing countries. In collaboration with colleagues, his group is conducting a large clinical trial in Tanzania to determine the effect of vitamin supplements on the risks of adverse birth outcomes and perinatal transmission of HIV and the rate of progression of disease among HIV-positive women. Dr. Fawzi and colleagues reported that prenatal multivitamin supplementation of HIV-infected women resulted in large and significant reductions in the risk of fetal loss, low birth weight, and severe prematurity.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Freedberg is Director of the Program in Epidemiology and Outcomes Research at the Harvard Medical School Division of AIDS, Director of the HIV Research Program in the Division of General Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research interests include decision analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and clinical epidemiology, particularly related to HIV clinical care and policy. Much of his work centers around "The Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC)” group, an HIV modeling team working on HIV treatment strategies, which he directs.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Hughes is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research focuses on statistical methods related to the design and analysis of clinical trials. He is the statistician for a number of trials, notably through his work as Director of the Statistical Center of the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group. Current research includes the development of methods for evaluating surrogate markers using meta-analysis of results from a number of clinical trials. This methodology is being applied in a project directed by Dr. Hughes, in collaboration with the HIV Surrogate Marker Collaborative Group, to assess the value of early treatment-induced changes in CD4 cell counts and viral load as surrogate markers for the development of AIDS.

Phyllis Kanki

Dr.  Kanki is a Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. A virologist with recognized expertise in the pathogenesis and molecular epidemiology of HIV in Africa, she has led AIDS research programs in Senegal for more than 19 years. She serves as the Principal Investigator for studies on HIV-1 and HIV-2 in West Africa that focus on the identification and reduced transmission of HIV-2, cross protection between HIV-2 and HIV-1, various times to disease development for different HIV-1 genotypes, and differnces in drug resistance associated with West African viruses. Since 2000, Dr. Kanki has directed the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN), a program she created with a $25 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Kanki is the Principal investigator for Harvard PEPFAR and its Rapid Expansion of Antiretroviral Therapy Program.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Kapiga is a member of faculty at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health and Population in the Harvard School of Public Health. His main research interests are on the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs); the impact of infectious diseases on reproductive health outcomes in developing countries; development and assessment of community-based HIV/STD control programs; development and testing of interventions to reduce perinatal transmission of HIV; and determinants of sexual behavior and condom use. Dr. Kapiga and colleagues are following a cohort of women working in hotels and bars in northern Tanzania. These women are at high risk of STDs, including HIV infection. Studies are underway to evaluate the impact of promising interventions on reducing the risk of HIV in this population.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Kuritzkes is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of AIDS Research at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. His research focuses on resistance of HIV to antiretroviral drugs. Work in his laboratory is directed towards understanding mechanisms of resistance to nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI) and novel entry inhibitors. His group is trying to understand evolutionary pathways in the emergence of zidovudine (AZT) resistance. Better understanding of the virologic, genetic, and biochemical aspects of resistance will help direct therapy and may lead to better therapeutic strategies in the future.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Lagakos is a Professor of Biostatistics and Director of the Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research at the Harvard School of Public Health. His current research involves a variety of statistical issues arising in clinical trials and other longitudinal studies, with particular emphasis on statistical methods and analyses relating to HIV and other infectious diseases. He is particularly interested in statistical methods for estimating the timing of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, which can occur in utero or after birth through breast feeding.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Marc Lallemant is a Research Associate in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health and Director of the Perinatal HIV Prevention Trial Group in Chiang-Mai, Thailand. His current research focuses on finding the best drug regimens for prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission of HIV and treatment of mothers and infants with HIV/AIDS.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Lee is a Professor of Virology at the Harvard School of Public. His major research interests are virus-specific antigens and their association with disease manifestations, viral replication, and host-virus interactions, with particular focus on human and related primate retroviruses. Currently, Dr. Lee is focusing on the modification of the antigenicity of HIV envelope protein for vaccine development.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Lockman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on determining the best antiretroviral drug regimens to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Africa, and the treatment of mothers who have developed drug resistance as a result of the use of drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission.

Yichen Lu

Dr. Lu is a Principal Research Scientist for HAI. He serves as the Executive Director of International Vaccine Development, Inc., a non-profit organization that promotes vaccine research and development in developing countries. He is also a Special Professor and Director of the Nankai University Vaccine Laboratory in Tianjin, China. Dr. Lu's laboratory focuses on vaccine research and development, particularly T-cell vaccines.

Ric Marlink

Dr. Marlink is a medical oncologist and a Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. He also serves as Vice President for Technical Implementation at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Dr. Marlink has directed HIV/AIDS-related clinical and laboratory training, infrastructure development and research in Botswana, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Thailand since 1985. He is the Principal Investigator of Botswana’s first large-scale antiretroviral treatment study and a training program (KITSO) for health care personnel to respond to Botswana's national program for HIV/AIDS.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. McIntosh is a Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School/Children's Hospital. His research focuses on HIV in children and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, largely through collaborations with groups in Thailand and sub-Saharan Africa.

Vlad Novitsky

Dr. Novitsky is a Principle Research Scientist in the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, where he has been researching the human immunodeficiency virus since 1996. His research examines HIV-1C, the subtype affecting populations in southern Africa. His work, particularly his investigative research of alleles specific to HIV in Botswana, is often conducted in conjunction with the research at the Botswana-Harvard Partnership.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr.  O'Brien is Chief of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity and head of the Section of Genetics of the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute. He is Co-Chairman of the International Committee on Comparative Gene Mapping. His research focuses on the collaborative interaction of mammalian cellular genes operative in concordant evolutionary descent of the immune system, retroviruses, and cancer onset. In collaboration with researchers at HAI, he is identifying human genetic loci which influence susceptibility to HIV infection, disease progression and immune response.

 

Marcello Pagano

Dr. Pagano is Professor of Statistical Computing at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research interests include the epidemiology of HIV infection, especially biostatistical methods for the surveillance of the epidemic and associated testing methodology. On surveillance methods he has concentrated on modeling the effects of reporting delay; on refining back-calculation methods, including research on how to overcome this method's shortcoming when it comes to its inability to evaluate HIV infection in the recent (last 3 or 4 years) past; on how to handle doubly censored observations; longitudinal, observational studies; and economical methods for making the blood supply safer.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Seage is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. For more than 20 years, Dr. Seage has conducted studies on the behavioral and biological aspects of HIV transmission and natural history. He is currently Principal Investigator of a case-crossover study designed to determine the role of alcohol use and unsafe sex among individuals at risk for HIV-1 infection. He is also Co-Investigator on projects evaluating the cost-effectiveness of HIV screening on treatment and prevention, and of preventing HIV complications in the era of highly effective antiretroviral therapies. Most recently, Dr. Seage has been involved in studies of pediatric HIV infection, evaluating the impact of ART on a variety of outcomes among perinatally infected children.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Shapiro is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Assistant Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research involves the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission and improving childhood survival in the developing world.  He is the Principal Investigator on a study of the etiology and outcome of diarrheal diseases in infants born to HIV-positive women, and a study of immunologic function of breast milk among HIV-infected women in Botswana. He is also Principal Investigator on a randomized clinical trial to determine the optimal infant feeding strategy among HIV-infected women in Botswana.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Wainberg is Director of the McGill University AIDS Centre and Professor of Medicine and of Microbiology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He served as President of the International AIDS Society from 1998-2000. His lab focuses on the reverse transcriptase (RT) of HIV-1 in regard to each of the basic mechanisms of action, inhibition by anti-viral drugs and drug resistance, and gene therapy. He also has projects on differences in drug resistance mutations according to HIV subtype and on the use of antiretroviral drugs for microbicides.

Tun-Hou Lee

Dr. Walker is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Partners AIDS Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He is also Principal Investigator of the Harvard-wide CFAR grant. He seeks to determine how the immune system controls chronic viral infections and to augment antiviral immunity for therapeutic benefit. He is leading an international research effort to understand how some HIV-infected people who have never been treated can fight the virus with their immune system. He hopes such knowledge will lead to a vaccine and new treatments for the disease. Dr. Walker has also spearheaded the creation of advanced clinical and laboratory facilities at the front lines of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where he often collaborates.

Bill Wester

Dr. C. William Wester is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a faculty member of the Vanderbilt Institute of Global Health (VIGH). His research activities focus on the complications of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) among HIV-1 infected adults residing in resource-limited settings, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He is actively involved in the training, education and mentoring of staff working in such settings.

[Harvard School of Public Health logo]
Harvard School of Public Health
© Copyright 2008, President and Fellows of Harvard College