Sarah Palmer is the Co-Director of the Centre for Virus Research at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney School of Medicine in Australia. She took up this position in early 2013.
From 2008 to 2012, she was a senior researcher at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. From 2000 to 2008, she headed the Virology Core Facility of the HIV Drug Resistance Program, National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health (NIH). At the NIH, she she led efforts to develop and perfect highly sensitive assays, such as the single-copy assay and single-cell sequencing assay, which provide new insights into HIV pathogenesis and persistence during long-term suppressive therapy.
Her principal areas of research interest focus on molecular and medical virology and the application of innovative techniques and assays, which provide new insights into disease pathogenesis and treatment, especially for HIV and COVID-19. Her current work focuses on understanding the genetic characteristics and dynamics of persistent HIV across a range of tissues and cells to guide and assess treatment interventions designed to reduce persistent HIV reservoirs and inform HIV eradication strategies. Sarah has her PhD in medical sciences (virology) from the Karolinksa Institutet and conducted her postdoctoral studies at the Center for AIDS Research, Stanford University Medical School.