Australasian HIV/AIDS Conference - Local Invited Speakers

Dr Garrett Prestage
Associate Professor Garrett Prestage has been a key figure in the response to HIV among gay men in Australia since the outset. He was active in gay community life in Australia since the mid-1970s through organisations like Mardi Gras, Twenty-Ten and ACON, and has conducted gay community-based research since 1983.
Since 1992, Garrett has worked at the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research. He has also worked for the Australian Research Centre in Sex Health and Society since 2007. He is an Investigator for the HIV Seroconversion Study, the Gay Community Periodic Surveys and many other studies of gay men and risk. He also established several highly successful cohort studies of gay men including the SMASH, Positive Health and HIM studies.

A ssociate Professor Gilda Tachedjian
Gilda Tachedjian is a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne and an Associate Professor at the Department of Microbiology, Monash University. She received her BSc (Hons) and PhD from Monash University on the study of drug resistance mutations in the HIV reverse transcriptase and completed her post-doctoral training at Columbia University, New York with Prof Stephen Goff where she studied the role of HIV reverse transcriptase subunit interactions on enzyme function and viral replication. A/Prof Tachedjian's current areas of interest include how HIV replicates in the host cell, HIV drug resistance and the development of microbicides for the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. A/Prof Tachedjian is the recipient of a CJ Martin Fellowship and a RD Wright Career Development Award from the NHMRC and is on the Editorial Boards of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses and Current HIV Research.

Dr. Edwina Wright
Dr Edwina Wright is an Infectious Diseases physician at the Alfred Hospital, heads the Asia Pacific NeuroAIDS Consortium (APNAC) Program at the Burnet Institute and is Co-Director of the Australian National NeuroAIDS Brain and Tissue Bank Project. Her key clinical research interest is in the field of HIV neurology. Since 2002 Dr Wright has chaired APNAC which comprises a group of physicians, scientists and social researchers with a shared interest in NeuroAIDS. With her APNAC colleagues Dr Wright has studied the epidemiology of NeuroAIDS across several countries of the Asia Pacific Region. She is involved in studies of the role of host genetics in NeuroAIDS and in large international clinical trials designed to determine the impact of different antiretroviral treatment strategies upon HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders: Dr Wright chaired the SMART Neurology Substudy and is currently the Chair of the START Neurology Substudy. In 2009 Dr Wright was elected Vice-President of ASHM.