“Max and his people have changed the lives—saved the lives—of so many people. Anybody here who’s in a position to support the Harvard AIDS Initiative, I can think of no greater cause, no worthier cause, than that.” Alexander McCall Smith, best-selling author of The Ladies No.1 Detective Agency Series, at a benefit reading for HAI at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. Watch below a slide show of McCall Smith’s visit:
President of Liberia Visits BHP
This May, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia visited the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP) as part of a five-day official visit to the Republic of Botswana. She met with the BHP leadership team and was given an overview of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in Botswana. She praised BHP’s work as a model for how African nations can successfully address the AIDS epidemic. President Sirleaf received an honorary Doctor…
Victor DeGruttola
Ask most people, “Do you have a purpose in life?” and they’ll pause and stammer. Ask Victor DeGruttola and he answers, “To develop, apply, and use quantitative methods and quantitative thinking to defend the interest of vulnerable people.” His job as Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) allows him to do those things every day.
Q&A with Victor DeGruttola
trtransmissionMartha Henry, Editor of Spotlight, asked Dr. DeGruttola about the Botswana Combination Prevention Project. Dr. Victor DeGruttola, Chair of the Dept. of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, is the Co-Principal Investigator of the Botswana Combination Prevention Project (BCPP). The BCPP is a large clinical trial that combines available HIV prevention methods to try to control HIV at a community level.
From Terrorist Cells to Sexual Networks: Modeling Complex Systems
By Martha Henry Fresh out of the University of Pennsylvania, Ravi Goyal was recruited by the National Security Agency (NSA) for its rapidly expanding Counter-Terrorism Unit. The year was 2002. Ravi went to work as an Applied Research Mathematician, using his exceptional math and computer skills to analyze how information flowed within and between terrorist networks.
Cell Phones & Sexual Networks
By Martha Henry Harvard AIDS Initiative (HAI) researchers are hoping to use data from cell phones to better understand sexual networks in Botswana villages.