Dr Kate Nambiar
Dr Kate Nambiar is a sexual health and gender identity physician who has worked in the NHS since 1999 and been extensively involved in activism for the trans community. She trained at Oxford and Imperial College, and completed a PhD in Bioinformatics and Immunology at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Dr. Nambiar began her career working in sexual health and HIV and has spent the largest proportion of that time based in Brighton. Much of her work has focussed on trans healthcare, and in 2012 she co-founded Clinic T, a sexual health service for trans and gender diverse people. She trained as a gender specialist at the Tavistock & Portman Gender Identity Clinic in London and now works as a Gender Clinician and Endocrinology Specialist at the Welsh Gender Service in Cardiff and as the medical director for Terrence Higgins Trust.
Ms. Rebecca De Havilland
Rebecca is the first transgender woman in Ireland and the first person to hold an Irish passport in their reassigned gender. Rebecca’s brave and eventful journey has paved the way for others to live their life as their true selves and the appetite for her story just keeps growing. Rebecca wears many professional hats. Having started her career as a sought after hair stylist for fashion shoots, the Eurovision song contest, and celebrity clients, she then went on to own and operate Tallon Model Agency (now Assets) in the 80’s and 90’s. Since writing her biography in the well-received book ‘His Name is Rebecca’, she is now a sought after public speaker and has spoken at various events all over Europe with the Terrence Higgins Trust. Rebecca has roles with the NHS and 56 Dean Street as a Peer Support Worker and HIV Awareness campaigner. Rebecca created Project Bootcamp, a training programme to empower trans people to gain employment. Rebecca returned to Ireland in 2022 and is currently working with HIV Ireland on raising awareness on HIV in trans people. Rebecca was the first person to be the Grand Marshall of both Dublin Pride 2022 and the Dublin Pride float of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2022. Rebecca’s upcoming engagements include her highly anticipated Virgin Media show called “Rebecca’s Second Chances” where she works with people across Ireland to give them a second chance at life.
Prof. Fiona Lyons
Prof Fiona Lyons is a consultant in GU/HIV Medicine at the GUIDE clinic, St. James’s Hospital and Clinical Professor at the School of Medicine, Trinity College, Dublin. Fiona took up her current consultant post in 2007. Between October 2015 and September 2018 she was national clinical lead in sexual health, working in the National Sexual Health and Crisis Pregnancy Programme on implementation of Ireland’s first national sexual health strategy. During her time as Clinical Lead she oversaw the development of National Standards, Eligibility Criteria and Guidelines for HIV PrEP and the implementation of Ireland’s HIV PrEP programme in 2019. Her special interests include HIV infection in women, pregnancy, HIV prevention and new models of STI care delivery. Fiona resumed her role as national clinical lead at the National Sexual Health and Crisis Pregnancy Programme in September 2021 for a five-year tenure to continue work on the clinical actions in the sexual health strategy.
Prof Raphael J. Landovitz
Prof. Landovitz is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine, and Director of the UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research & Education. He graduated from Princeton University in 1992 and received his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1996, and completed residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Infectious Diseases fellowship at the Brigham and Womens/Massachusetts General Hospital program. He served as Medical Chief Resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2001-02. Since 2013, he served as the leader of the Clinical Research Site (CRS) at the UCLA CARE Center and Co-PI of the UCLA AIDS Prevention and Treatment Clinical Trials Unit in 2020. He is also the Co-Director of the National Institute of Mental Health-funded Center for HIV Identification Prevention and Treatment Services (CHIPTS). His research is focused on the optimization of the use of antiretroviral medication for both HIV treatment and HIV prevention. Dr. Landovitz has been part of the leadership of the NIAID-funded AIDS Clinical Trial Groups (ACTG), HIV Prevention Trial Network (HPTN), and the Adolescent Trial Network (ATN). He serves on the Executive Committee of the HIV Prevention Trials Network and was awarded the HIVMA HIV Research Award in 2017. He leads several biomedical and behavioral prevention intervention studies and projects using Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) strategies for men who have sex with men and cis- and transgender women. He was the principal investigator of two multisite PrEP demonstration projects in Los Angeles County and he led the NIH/DAIDS-funded Phase 2 and Phase 3 registrational clinical trials evaluating long-acting injectable cabotegravir for PrEP, which contributed to recent US FDA and multiple other regulatory approvals. He currently is evaluating implementation of long-acting injectable PrEP, as well as continuing to study other investigational long-acting/extended release products for HIV prevention.
Prof Caroline Sabin
Caroline Sabin, PhD, is Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at University College London (UCL) and is Director of the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Blood-Borne and Sexually Transmitted Infections. After completing her PhD in Epidemiology, Caroline has worked on the analysis of large observational HIV databases with an interest in raising awareness of the biases inherent in these databases. Her particular interests are in describing the natural history of HIV infection, identifying prognostic markers and describing responses and adverse events to cART. She established the UK Collaborative HIV Cohort (UK CHIC) Study, a multicentre study of 50,000 people with HIV, and was the principal statistician for the D:A:D Study. More recently, together with Professor Alan Winston, she has established the POPPY Study, a cohort that aims to study the effects of ageing in HIV infection. She has been closely involved with many other large national and international HIV cohort studies.
Assoc Prof Virginie Gautier
Virginie Gautier is an Associate Professor in Virology and Principal Investigator at UCD Centre for Experimental Pathogen Host Research (CEPHR), where she leads an independent research program focusing on the HIV-Host interface and HIV CURE funded by HRB, IRC, and H2020. Her team research core expertise lies in Molecular virology, Cellular Biology, Immunometabolism, Multi-OMICs strategies, drug screening, and pre-clinical studies. At the molecular level, the Host-Virus interface is a fundamental aspect of HIV molecular pathogenesis and persistence. To delineate the intersection between HIV and cellular pathways, she has developed innovative interdisciplinary approaches for target discovery, including Yeast-two hybrid screening, system-wide Proteomics, Metabolomics, and siRNA screening. She has established a molecular pathway-driven translational research platform based on in vitro and ex vivo primary T cell models of HIV latency to facilitate drug screening and identify novel classes of HIV latency-reversing drugs.
Dr Grace Kenny
Grace Kenny is a graduate of University College Dublin medical school, undertaking higher specialist training in infectious diseases. She is completing a PhD at the Centre for Experimental Pathogen Host Research exploring immune responses in acute and post-acute COVID-19 under the supervision of Prof Paddy Mallon.
Ms Leah Ennis Mc Loughlin
Ms Leah is a second-year PhD student based at UCD Centre for Experimental Pathogen Host Research (CEPHR) working with her supervisor, Associate Professor Virginie Gautier, and co-supervisor, Professor Eoin Feeney. She is an awardee of the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme (GOIPG/2021/1266) funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC). Her research project is entitled: “Developing a novel antiviral strategy against SARS-CoV-2 by specifically targeting the host-virus Interface”. Leah is focused on how SUMOylation, a reversible post-translational modification (PTM), modulates host-virus interactions and SARS-CoV-2 infection. This strategy could lead to the identification of new targets for antiviral development. Since starting her PhD, she is actively promoting STEM awareness and inclusivity for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HOH) students, with the aim of unlocking potential, breaking barriers, and increasing accessibility of STEM for Deaf/HOH students.
Dr Rachel MacCann
Dr Rachel MacCann is an Infectious Diseases SpR and ICAT fellow based in St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin. She is currently undertaking a PhD with the ICAT programme investigating the impact of inflammation and aging in HIV with a particular focus on the role of the gut microbiome. She is also the co-chair of the Infectious Diseases’ Clinical Trials Network Ireland (ID-CTNI) Community Advisory Board.
Stephen O’Hare
Stephen O’Hare is the Executive Director of HIV Ireland, a nationally focused, non-profit, community organization working to end new HIV transmissions and advance the rights of people living with HIV. He is also Chair of the PPI Community Advisory Board for the Infectious Diseases Clinical Trials Network Ireland (ID-CTNI). Prior to joining HIV Ireland, Stephen was Executive Director of Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) and, before that, Senior Policy Programme Manager and Director of European Projects at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL). Stephen is a qualified barrister and social researcher who has worked extensively on human rights and health-related policy, strategy, and campaigns.
Prof Joel Palefsky
Joel Palefsky, M.D., C.M., F.R.C.P.(C). Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. He trained in medicine and Internal Medicine at McGill University in Montreal Canada and in Infectious Diseases at Stanford University. He is an internationally recognized expert on the molecular biology, treatment, pathogenesis and natural history of anogenital human papillomavirus infections, particularly in the setting of HIV infection. He is the founder and director of the world’s first clinic devoted to prevention of anal cancer, the Anal Neoplasia Clinic Research and Education Center at the UCSF Cancer Center. He is the vice-chair of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-supported AIDS Malignancy Consortium. He is the chair of the Anal Cancer /HSIL Outcomes Research (ANCHOR) Study, a national multi-site NIH study that showed that treatment of anal cancer precursor lesions prevents the development of anal cancer. He is founder and past president of the International Anal Neoplasia Society and is past president of the International Papillomavirus Society. He is founder and director of the International Papillomavirus Society International HPV Awareness Day campaign.