Professor Ayesha Kharsany (Phd, MS Epidemiology) is a distinguished microbiologist and epidemiologist. She is a Research Associate at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and serves as an Honorary Full Professor in the College of Health Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her research has made seminal contributions towards i) enhancing understanding of the role of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and vaginal dysbiosis in enhancing HIV acquisition; ii) demonstrating the role of tenofovir gel and behavioural economics in preventing HSV-2 infection in young women; iii) undertaking epidemiological studies that revealed high HIV infection rates in young women in stabilized epidemics; iv) Phylogenetics to understand the cycle of HIV transmission; v) the impact of ART on new HIV infections in hyper-endemic epidemic settings; vi) highlighting the intertwining of the HIV and TB epidemics as a result of advancing HIV disease pre-antiretroviral treatment (ART) access that laid the foundation for undertaking clinical trials that demonstrated the importance of timing of ART initiation in HIV-TB coinfected patients; vii) the ongoing evaluation of rapid, point of care diagnostics for STIs and Covid-19. She has made substantial contributions to nurturing and mentoring the next generation of science leadership and translating policy to practice. Her research has had profound impact on policy and practice nationally and internationally such that the understanding of HIV risk through the complex social, behavioural and biological factors that perpetuate the cycle of HIV transmission led to the South African National Strategic Plan to target and implement combination HIV prevention strategies and UNAIDS adopting the policy of “Getting onto the fast track-the life-cycle approach” of HIV prevention. She is a member of Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), has successfully secured research grants from CDC/PEPFAR, NIH, EDCTP and the SA-MRC, serves on several scientific committees, is a reviewer for numerous high impact journals, was instrumental in post-graduate curriculum development, has mentored and supervised post graduate students. She has authored 120 peer-reviewed publications, several in high impact journals, four book chapters, has an h-index of 32, and over 9,000 citations. Her review on HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa, cited over 1000 times, underscores the importance and relevance of her work (Kharsany ABM, et al. Open AIDS J 2016). She is a co-patent holder of tenofovir gel to prevent acquisition of HSV-2 (Patent: EP 2 579 871 B1).
