HIV Vaccine Research Network Advisory Group

Edna Viegas

Edna Viegas is a Mozambican physician, researcher and public health leader with extensive experience in clinical research. She serves as the Provincial Delegate of the Instituto Nacional de Saúde (INS) in Maputo City, where she oversees health research, epidemiological surveillance, health emergency preparedness and response, and scientific initiatives across Maputo and the southern region of Mozambique. Throughout her career, Edna has contributed to research on HIV, human papillomavirus and other infectious diseases, playing a key role in advancing evidence-based public health interventions. She has been instrumental in strengthening Mozambique’s capacity to conduct high-quality HIV prevention and vaccine trials, including supporting the establishment and growth of the Polana Caniço Health Research Center, one of the country’s leading clinical research centres.

Linda-Gail Bekker

Linda-Gail Bekker is the Chief Executive Officer of the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation and Director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, South Africa. Linda-Gail is a physician, scientist and infectious disease specialist. Her research interests include programmatic and action research around antiretroviral rollout and TB integration, and prevention of HIV in women, young people and men who have sex with men. She serves on numerous international scientific and advisory committees. She is an A+ rated scientist and has published more than 800 peer-reviewed papers.

Marcel Tongo

Marcel Tongo Passo returned to his home country, Cameroon, in 2018 after his postgraduate training in South Africa. He sought to establish an independent research career, build his own laboratory and recruit PhD fellows. His major interest lies in understanding the mechanisms of strain selection during HIV emergence. 

Tongo Passo focuses on HIV-1 group M poses the most important obstacle to the development of a cure and an effective vaccine. The Congo Basin area is where HIV-1 is believed to have originated and has the broadest HIV diversity, with numerous recombinant forms and unique strains. He believes it is of particular importance to fully understand the biological underpinnings of this diversity: how it arose, circulates and impacts the extent and duration of individual sub-epidemics. A successful vaccine and cure strategy has to deal with the issues of HIV emergence and understand the factors governing emergence, as the vaccine formulas should cover all the emergent strains in order for the strategy to be effective.

Marianne Mureithi

Marianne W Mureithi is the Director of KAVI-Institute of Clinical Research at the University of Nairobi and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. She is an immunologist and clinical research scientist with expertise in HIV vaccine research, mucosal immunology, women’s health, HPV and clinical trials. Her work focuses on advancing locally relevant and globally impactful research in HIV prevention, vaccine science and infectious diseases while strengthening research capacity and partnerships across Kenya, Africa and the globe.

Marina Caskey

Marina Caskey is Professor of Clinical Investigation at The Rockefeller University. Her work focuses on the clinical evaluation and development of novel immunotherapeutic strategies against infectious diseases, including HIV-1 and, more recently, SARS-CoV-2. Marina has led a series of clinical trials on anti-HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) to evaluate their potential role as part of long-term HIV-1 remission strategies. Her team’s studies aim to evaluate the direct antiviral activity of these promising new immunotherapeutic investigational products, as well as their potential effects on the HIV-1 reservoir and on host immune responses. She currently serves as Chair of the Medical Staff Executive of the Rockefeller University Hospital and Chair of the ACTG Reservoirs Remission and Cure Transformative Science Group. Marina co-lead’s the REACH Martin Delaney Collaboratory and she is an Associate Director of the Einstein-Rockefeller-CUNY CFAR (ERC-CFAR).

Nigel Garrett

Nigel Garrett is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a specialist physician in HIV and sexual health and has led more than 30 clinical trials and cohort studies focused on HIV prevention and treatment, as well as STI diagnostics and care. More recently, he co-led the multinational CoVPN3008, Sisonke and Sherpa COVID-19 vaccine trials. Currently, he serves as Co-Chair of the BRILLIANT HIV vaccine trial consortium. 

Nigel has published more than 190 scientific papers and is an honorary Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town, the University of KwaZulu-Natal and University College London, where he teaches and mentors postgraduate researchers, IAS fellows and clinical investigators.

Thandi Onami

Thandi Onami is a Senior Program Officer on the HIV Vaccine Team at the Gates Foundation, where she supports global innovative research programmes to prevent HIV transmission. Previously, she served as an immunologist/program officer at the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Before NIH, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where her research lab focused on T and B cell immunity to viruses; she also taught classes in immunology, microbiology and global health. 

Thandi received her undergraduate degree in biology from Princeton University and her PhD in biology/cellular and molecular immunology from the University of California, San Diego. She completed postdoctoral studies in viral immunology at the Emory Vaccine Center and served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow at Fogarty International Center. She is a member of the American Association of Immunologists.