Conference Committees

IAS 2017 International Scientific Co-Chair and IAS President
Linda-Gail Bekker, South Africa
Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town
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Linda-Gail Bekker is Professor of medicine and Deputy Director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town. She is also chief operating officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that works to improve the wellbeing of people from some of the poorest communities in South Africa. She is a physician scientist with a keen interest in HIV, tuberculosis and related diseases. Her research interests include programmatic and action research around antiretroviral roll out and TB integration, prevention of HIV in women, youth and men who have sex with men. In her role in the Foundation, she is passionate about community development and engagement and actively explores new and innovative ways to tackle the challenge that is HIV. She is President of the International AIDS Society and serves on a number of other national and international committees and boards.

IAS 2017 Local Scientific Co-Chair
Jean-François Delfraissy, France
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Jean-François Delfraissy is the director of ANRS and the Institute of Immunology, Inflammation, Infectious Diseases and Microbiology. Former head of the I3M centre at Paris Sud University Hospital (AP-HP), Jean François Delfraissy also led the Paris Sud Unit of Clinical Research. In addition to his teaching duties as professor of immunology, he is deeply involved in research in a range of programmes and therapeutic trials as part of Inserm / ANRS. As of July 2014, he set up and coordinated the organization of translational research on Ebola by French teams under AVIESAN. In October 2014, he was appointed by the French Prime Minister as inter-ministerial coordinator of all international and domestic operations in response to the Ebola outbreak. He was awarded the title of Officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 2010.

IAS Past President
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, France
Institut Pasteur
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Françoise Barré-Sinoussi has been involved in retrovirology research since the early 1970s and has been recognized for her contributions to HIV/AIDS research, in particular the discovery of HIV in 1983. Until 2015, as Research Director at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and Professor at the Institut Pasteur in France, she led research programs on HIV/AIDS pathogenesis, specifically on mechanisms required to control HIV/SIV infection and/or harmful T cell activation induced in response to HIV/SIV infection. Today, she serves as Honorary President of the Institut Pasteur International Network and of the Virology Department of the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi was elected President of the International AIDS Society (IAS) between 2012 and 2014, and is still member and chair of a number of international scientific advisory panels and boards. She also received more than 40 national and international awards and honors, including the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her contributions to HIV/AIDS.

IAS President-Elect
Anton Pozniak, United Kingdom
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
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Anton Pozniak ran the HIV research unit at King’s College London before moving to his current position as Consultant Physician/Senior Lecturer at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in 1998, where he is an executive director of HIV research and Director of HIV services. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1996 and has been made a Life member of the British HIV Association. Dr Pozniak was an advisor on HIV and AIDS to the UK Government Health Select Committee and is on the Expert advisory group on AIDS for the UK Department of Health. He is an executive member of the European AIDS Clinical Society and on the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society.

IAS Regional Representative
Jürgen Rockstroh, Germany
University of Bonn
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Jürgen Rockstroh is Professor of Medicine and Head of the HIV Outpatient Clinic at the University of Bonn in Germany. In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Rockstroh is involved in HIV research on: antiretroviral therapy, including new drug classes; the course of HIV disease in haemophiliacs; and HIV and hepatitis co-infection. He currently chairs the hepatitis research activities in NEAT and EuroSIDA. The German Society for Infectious Diseases awarded Dr. Rockstroh and his co-authors the prize in clinical infectious diseases in 2002, and the national AIDS research prize in 2005. Dr Rockstroh has authored or co-authored over 300 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and over 70 book chapters.

Executive Director
Owen Ryan, Switzerland
International AIDS Society
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Owen Ryan is the Executive Director of the International AIDS Society. Prior to the IAS, Owen was Deputy Director for Public Policy at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research where he was responsible for policy and advocacy related to global health financing, new HIV technologies, and key populations. Prior to amfAR, Owen spent four years as a Program Officer for HIV/AIDS policy and advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has previously worked on HIV/AIDS programs in Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Owen serves as the Alternate Board Member to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Vice Chair of the Board for Funders Concerned about AIDS. He earned his Masters of Public Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and his Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Guido Silvestri, USA
Emory University School of Medicine
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Guido Silvestri is Professor & Vice-Chair of Pathology at the Emory University School of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Microbiology & Immunology at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He has been involved in studies of HIV pathogenesis and vaccines using non-human primate models since 1993, and has authored or co-authored 204 peer-reviewed publications in this field including some in the highest impact journals (Nature, Science, Cell, etc). He is a recipient of several NIH awards, and has given over 150 lectures and seminar in many academic and government institutions around the world. Dr. Silvestri is an Editor of PLoS Pathogens, Journal of Virology, and Journal of Infectious Diseases and is a member of the CROI organizing committee.

Victor Appay, France
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)
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Victor Appay is a Research Director at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), and head of the “Pathogenesis of chronic infections and Immune aging” team within the “Immunity and Infectious Diseases Research Center” of the Pierre et Marie Curie University (UPMC). His research interests include T-cell correlates of efficacy in HIV infection, immune decline with human aging and inflammation, pathogenesis of viral infections, T-cell based therapy and vaccines. He and his colleagues succeeded in identifying the molecular characteristics of certain T lymphocytes that have the specific property of being able to detect and control HIV and its mutant versions. Moreover, his work has yielded pioneer observations in paralleling HIV infection and immunosenescence, demonstrating the role of immune activation in the development of premature immune aging.

Dominique Costagliola, France
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)
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Dominique Costagliola is a Senior Researcher at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) and Head of the Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health Unit UMR-S 1136 at INSERM and Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC). She is the Principal Investigator of the French Hospital Database on HIV and she is a member of the executive board for EUROCOORD, a consortium of European HIV cohorts. She heads its council of partners and for ART-CC a consortium of HIV cohorts from Europe and North America. She is also Head of one of the monitoring and statistical data analysis centres for ANRS trials and cohorts. Her main fields of competence include biostatistics, epidemiology, including pharmacoepidemiology, clinical trials and modelling applied to HIV infection, haemophilia, drugs and viral safety of blood transfusion.

Beatriz Grinsztejn, Brazil
Instituto de Pesquisa Clinica Evandro Chagas-Fiocruz
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Beatriz Grinsztejn is an Infectious Diseases physician and researcher at the Evandro Chagas National Institute of Infectious Diseases/Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is the Director of the STD/AIDS Clinical Research Laboratory and Principal Investigator of the FIOCRUZ HIV Prevention and Therapeutic Clinical Trials Unit at FIOCRUZ, which is affiliated to the HIV Prevention Trials Network, the AIDS Clinical Trials Group and the ANRS, and implements Prevention and Therapeutic clinical trials and cohort studies. She is a member of the Brazilian Advisory Committee for Antiretroviral Therapy and HIV/AIDS Research, the WHO 2013 Adult Antiretroviral Therapy Guidelines Panel, the IAS-USA HIV Prevention Panel and the UNAIDS Scientific Expert Panel. Dr. Grinsztejn is a Faculty Member of the Masters and PhD Degree Program on Clinical Research in Infectious Diseases at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.

Jean-Michel Molina, France
Saint-Louis Hospital and University of Paris
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Jean-Michel Molina is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Paris Diderot and is Head of the Infectious Diseases Department at the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris. Professor Molina continues to be involved in basic HIV research and is affiliated to the INSERM U941 directed by Prof. F. Clavel. As the Head of the Infectious Disease Department in the Saint-Louis Hospital, Prof. Molina mainly treats immunocompromised HIV-infected patients, bone marrow and renal transplant patients, and patients with hematologic malignancies and cancers. Prof. Molina’s primary clinical research interest lies in the area of the treatment of HIV infection, and he has been involved in a number of studies assessing new drugs or new strategies for the treatment of HIV infection. He is also the Chair of the Clinical Trial Group at the French National Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS). More recently, Professor Molina has broadened his field of interest to the prevention of HIV infection with antiretrovirals and is leading the ANRS IPERGAY PrEP trial in men who have sex with men in France and Canada.

Philippe van de Perre, France
University of Montpellier
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Philippe Van de Perre is professor of medicine, bacteriology and virology at the faculty of medicine of the University of Montpellier. He is the head of the department of bacteriology-virology and vice-president of the directorate of the University Teaching Hospital in Montpellier. He is also the director of the research unit “Pathogenesis and Control of Chronic Infection” (INSERM/University Montpellier/EFS). He trained in medicine and microbiology at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and obtained his PhD in microbiology in 1992. He has been involved in HIV research since 1982, and his present research agenda is focused on deciphering viral reservoirs in breast milk and their involvement in transmission, prevention of residual transmission of HIV by breastfeeding, and innovation in the diagnosis of chronic infections. He has authored 432 original articles in international medical journals.

Nyaradzo Mgodi, Zimbabwe
University of Zimbabwe-University of California San Francisco Collaborative Research Program (UZ-UCSF)
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Nyaradzo Mavis Mgodi is a histopathologist with 8 years of experience in conducting clinical trials in women of reproductive age. She is lead investigator for the VOICE study, the VOICE Bone Mineral Density Sub-study, ASPIRE study and HPTN-076. She is protocol co-chairperson for HOPE, the planned open label extension study to ASPIRE as well as for HVTN 703/HPTN 081 study. Nyaradzo provides her clinical trials unit with scientific expertise including protocol development, protocol execution and mentorship of young scientists. Nyaradzo is currently a scientific reviewer for the Medical Research Council of Zimbabwe and is a member of the Policy and Implementation Steering Committee for the Global Evaluation of Microbicide Sensitivity (GEMS) project, a project that aims to inform policies and define programmatic considerations related to use of ARV-based HIV prevention products and risk of resistance.

Khuat Thi Hai Oanh, Vietnam
Centre for Supporting Community Development Initiatives
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Khuat Thi Hai Oanh is the Founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Supporting Community Development Initiatives (SCDI), an NGO that improves the quality of life for the most marginalized populations in Vietnam through community empowerment and policy advocacy. Under her leadership, SCDI reaches out to and helps improve the physical, socio-psycho and economic well-being of thousands of sex workers, drug users, people living with HIV and their spouses, as well as men who have sex with men. In 2007, Oanh founded the Vietnam Civil Society Partnership Platform on AIDS, which brings together hundreds of civil society groups and organizations in coordinated efforts to combat HIV and AIDS. She is a co-investigator of ANRS/NIDA-funded DRIVE cohort study, which evaluates the impact of combination intervention on ending HIV transmission among people who inject drugs in Vietnam.

Ingrid Bassett, USA
Harvard Medical School, Harvard University Center for AIDS Research
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Ingrid V. Bassett is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a practicing Infectious Disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research interests include HIV testing and linkage to HIV and TB care in Durban, South Africa. She is examining predictors of failure to link to care following a new HIV diagnosis to design interventions to improve the high rates of mortality and loss to follow-up observed in South Africa. She has recently completed a multi-site randomized trial to assess the efficacy and cost of a health system navigator to improve rates of entry into HIV care and tuberculosis treatment completion. She is currently evaluating the clinical impact of GeneXpert MTB/RIF screening on community-based mobile HIV testing units in Durban.

Bruno Spire, France
AIDES
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Bruno Spire is the honorary President of AIDES. He has been President between 2007 and 2015 and a member since 1988. He is still involved in major advocacy fields, including the rights of minorities, gay men, injecting drug users, migrants in order to guarantee an equal access to care. He also advocates for a better consideration of community-based NGOs by the public health authorities. Dr Spire is also a Research Director in the French National Institute for Medical Research. He is currently leading a community-based research team focused on public issues in HIV and HCV research.

Each scientific track has a track committee comprised of two track leads and members who are selected with regard to expertise, region, and gender. The track committees play an active role in the preparation of the IAS 2017 conference programme, from the initial planning stage through to finalizing the programme content.

Track A: Basic science

Track B: Clinical science

Track C: Prevention science

Track D: Implementation science

IAS 2017 Community Engagement Board Chair
Bruno Spire, France
ORS – INSERM UMR912-SESSTIM
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Dr. Bruno Spire is a researcher living with HIV and a senior scientist at the French National Institute for Medical Research (INSERM). Since 1988 he has been a member of AIDES, a non-governmental HIV organization in France. He was President of this organization from 2007-2015 and he was elected as Honourary President in 2016.

Bruno trained as a medical doctor in Paris and obtained his degree in 1985. He graduated with a PhD in Virology in 1990, working with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi’s team involved in the discovery of HIV. He participated in the characterization of HIV reverse transcriptase, described the first methods of inactivation of HIV, and studied the HIV Vif protein. In 1998, he re-focused his research towards public health issues associated with HIV and AIDS, to strengthen ties between science and activism. Since then he has been involved in numerous multidisciplinary studies researching adherence, quality of life, and at-risk behaviours of people living with HIV and key populations. Currently, he leads a community-based research team at INSERM. He has been a principal investigator and co-investigator in several community-based research projects on key populations investigating HIV lay-testing, safer injection education by peers, and the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) IPERGAY trial which explores PrEP on-demand in high-risk men who have sex with men (MSM).

Florence Thune, France
Sidaction
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Florence Thune has been living with HIV for 20 years. As a graduate of an international business and management school, Florence started to work in the humanitarian field in 1987 with Handicap International, a large French non-governmental organization working on disability issues at an international level. She spent nine years in the field as Head of Humanitarian Missions in Djibouti and Somalia, as well as in Thailand and Pakistan. She then worked for nine years at Handicap International’s headquarters in France, first as a Programmes Desk Officer then as Deputy Director in charge of institutional donor relations. During this time, she directly contributed to Handicap International’s involvement in the field of HIV and disability in several programmes across Africa and Asia.

In 2005, Florence started to work at Sidaction. Sidaction is a non-governmental organization based in Paris that funds HIV scientific research programmes, and HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment projects in France, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Florence joined Sidaction’s International Programmes department as a Training Programme Officer for community-based organizations and five years later became the Head of the Capacity Building Unit. She became the Director of the Programmes Department for France in June 2015.

Luís Mendão, Portugal
EATG (European AIDS Treatment Group)
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Luís Mendão graduated in biochemistry in 1983 from the University Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, France. Luís Mendão was diagnosed with HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) in 1996.

Luís is currently Chair of the Board of GAT – Portuguese Treatment Activist Group, a non-governmental organization founded in 2001. GAT works in prevention, early diagnosis, treatment and care of HIV and AIDS, viral hepatitis, and tuberculosis among key populations. He is also the founder and on the Board of Directors of the AntiProhibitionist Association (SOMA-APA). Luís is currently Co-Chair of the Civil Society Forum on HIV/AIDS at the European Commission and Chair of the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG). He also participates on the Steering Committee of the HIVPORTUGAL initiative. For the last ten years, he has been a community consultant for the Regional Office of the World Health Organization Europe (WHO Europe), European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Wim Vandevelde, South Africa
GNP+
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For over a decade Wim Vandevelde has been committed to HIV, hepatitis and tuberculosis treatment advocacy, education, and medical research.

Elected to the Board of Directors of the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) in 2004, Wim served as its Chairman from 2007 until 2009. Before and during those years, he also chaired the Research Working Group of the EATG and the European Community Advisory Board (ECAB), as well as the Policy Working Group.

Wim is a founder and past president of the Portuguese Activist Group for HIV/AIDS Treatment, GAT, and the Community Representative Member on the Stop TB Partnership Working Group on New Drugs. Since 2012 he is the Chair of the Global TB Community Advisory Board (TB CAB), which he co-founded in 2011. He is a member of the Global Coalition of TB Activists (GCTA) and a founding member of the Community Advisory Panel of The Union (U-CAP). In June 2015, Wim joined the Community Development department at the Global Network of People living with HIV (GNP+) in Cape Town, South Africa. His role focuses on assisting the Communities Delegation to the UNITAID Board, acting as their liaison.

Andrew Tan, Malaysia
MyPlus
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Andrew Tan was diagnosed with HIV in 1994 and has been active in the field of HIV since 2002. He has joined various community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, and regional organizations. He led the organizing committees for the Candlelight Memorial (International AIDS Memorial Day) events in 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007, the World AIDS Day event in 2006, and numerous other outreach and public awareness campaigns. Andrew is one of the key coordinators providing peer education, counselling and emotional support to newly diagnosed patients referred from four hospitals around Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He now conducts support group meetings serving over 200 clients, of which 60% are men who have sex with men (MSM). He also started the MSM Support Group in 2006 and conducts face-to-face counselling and hospital/home visits when necessary.

Andrew is one of the founding members of myPlus, the Malaysian Positive Network and was elected President in April 2011. He has served on the Malaysian AIDS Council (MAC) as an Executive Committee Member for two terms from 2006-2010, and recently completed another term from 2014-2016. He was also part of the Community Activities Group at the 8th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment, and Prevention in 2015 in Vancouver, Canada.

Camille Anoma, Côte d'Ivoire
Espace Confiance
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Dr. Camille Anoma is 56 years old and married with five children. He trained as a medical doctor in Abidjan and obtained his medical degree in 1992. In 1999, he graduated with a Masters in Public Health with a focus on disease control of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV, and reproductive health from the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.

He is the Director of Espace Confiance, a national non-governmental organization founded in 2007 in the Ivory Coast. The organization aims to improve access to STI and HIV prevention and cares services, and advocacy-based services, for key populations.

Camille has 20 years of experience in prevention and care of HIV and other STIs among key populations, particularly sex workers and men who have sex with men (MSM). Currently, he is the Ivory Coast team leader for a multicentric study involving MSM in West Africa.