Salim Abdool Karim

Professor Salim S. Abdool Karim, FRS, is a clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist widely recognized for scientific contributions in HIV and Covid-19. He is the Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) in Durban, South Africa and CAPRISA Professor of Global Health in the Department of Epidemiology of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He serves as Special Advisor on pandemics to the Director-General of the World Health Organisation. He is an Adjunct Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard University, Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Cornell University and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He previously served as President of the South African Medical Research Council.

His clinical research on TB-HIV treatment has shaped international guidelines on the clinical management of co-infected patients. He co-led the CAPRISA 004 trial that provided proof-of-concept for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) - that antiretrovirals can prevent sexually transmitted HIV infection. He is co-inventor on patents used in HIV vaccine candidates and passive immunisation strategies with broadly neutralising antibodies.

He has been ranked among the world’s most highly cited scientists by Web of Science. He is co-editor of textbooks on epidemiology (Oxford), HIV/AIDS (Cambridge) and clinical trials (Springer). He is the author of “Standing up for Science: A Voice of Reason” (Pan MacMillan). He has received the Lasker, Gairdner, Hideyo Noguchi and Kwame Nkrumah Prizes. He is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).