The rockefeller university

RECIPIENT OF THE HONORARY DEGREE

Renowned for transformational AIDS investigations, Quarraisha Abdool Karim is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose research and advocacy have saved lives. She is the Associate Scientific Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at Columbia University, and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. She also serves as President of The World Academy of Sciences.

Quarraisha grew up under apartheid in South Africa, where she witnessed how discrimination sabotages health, education, and quality of life. Throughout her career, she has dapplied science to benefit the world’s citizens. She has stood up to mighty forces, including AIDS denialists in powerful positions and anti-vaccination campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the early 1980s, Quarraisha earned bachelor’s degrees in microbiology and biochemistry from the University of Durban-Westville and the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. She proceeded to master’s work in parasitology at Columbia University in 1988 and, in 2000, she completed a Ph.D. at the University of Natal in South Africa.

Quarraisha’s research with her husband, Salim, established that, in South Africa, older men were infecting adolescent girls and young women with HIV. The duo showed, for the first time, that antiretrovirals protect women from acquiring HIV infection. This advance led to an HIV technology—pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)—that is used in most countries today. These findings and others informed new policies in South Africa and beyond. In parallel with their own studies, she and Salim built South Africa’s scientific infrastructure and trained the next generation of HIV and tuberculosis researchers.

Quarraisha chaired the UN Secretary-General’s panel on how science can promote the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, chairs PEPFAR’s Scientific Advisory Board, and serves as Commissioner of the Eastern and Southern African Commission on Drugs. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, honorary international member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, fellow of the International Science Council, and fellow of the African Academy of Science. She and Salim jointly received the Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award, the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, the Fourth Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize, and the VinFuture Special Prize. In addition, she has earned many other awards, some of which Salim also received separately.