Program Steering Committee

Professor Andrew Freedman MA, MB, B Chir, MD, FRCP (Lond. & Edin.) is Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Vaccine Trials at the University Hospital of Wales, and Director of International Education and Honorary Professor at Cardiff University School of Medicine. He qualified in Medicine from Cambridge University and St Thomas’ Hospital in 1980, and subsequently trained in Infectious Diseases at St George’s Hospital, London, and Harvard Medical School, USA, where he undertook research into the effects of HIV on haemopoiesis, before coming to Cardiff in 1994.  He is past Honorary Secretary and past Chair of the Audit and Standards Subcommittee of the British HIV Association and he sits on the MHRA Infection Expert Advisory Group. He was appointed lead Principal Investigator for Covid-19 vaccine trials in Wales and Chair of the Data Monitoring & Ethics Committee for the AGILE Trial Platform in 2020.

Simon has been an HIV-positive advocate for more than 20 years and co-funded i-Base in 2000.

Heather is Consultant Pharmacist (HIV/Sexual Health) at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, one of the UK’s largest HIV centres, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton. She was appointed to the NHS England HIV Clinical Reference Group in 2016 and is now serving her third and final term of office. She is a former Co-Chair of the HIV Pharmacy Association (HIVPA); the HIVPA Media Liaison Officer; a member of the HIVPA Expert Panel, and in 2011 received a HIVPA Lifetime Award. She is also the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s HIV media spokesperson. Heather established the UK’s first pharmacist-led antiretroviral clinic in 1996, is an Independent Prescriber, and has been actively involved in medicines optimisation and developing the role of the pharmacist in HIV throughout most of her career. Her research interests include health beliefs and their impact on treatment uptake and adherence; ageing and polypharmacy. Heather volunteers as an HIV Chaplain, and until recently was Trustee of two Brighton-based HIV charities: the Martin Fisher Foundation (www.themartinfisherfoundation.org) and Lunch Positive (www.lunchpositive.org). She was also Chaplain to the Master of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in 2021-22.

Dr Scarsi is a Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), with appointments in both the College of Pharmacy and College of Medicine. Her clinical pharmacology research program focuses on optimizing therapies for persons living with HIV, with an emphasis on sex/gender related issues and tuberculosis co-infection. Dr Scarsi is an active investigator in the ACTG clinical trial network, where she is a scientific member of the Women’s Health Collaborative Science Group and a past member of the Tuberculosis Transformative Science Group. Locally, Dr Scarsi is a clinical consultant in the UNMC HIV clinic. Nationally, she has served terms on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents, the Board of Directors for the HIV Medical Association, and the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council.

Jonathan M Schapiro MD has devoted his career to HIV clinical care, research and education since completing his Fellowship in Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine Center For AIDS Research. Dr Schapiro’s research has focused on the causes of antiretroviral drug failure, interventions to optimize clinical care, and new drug development. His interests have include resistance and cross-resistance between drugs, associations between resistance and pharmacology, development of new antiretroviral agents with improved resistance and pharmacological profiles, the clinical utility of resistance and drug level testing, and integrating resistance assays and other diagnostics into clinical care. He has been involved in the development of advanced interpretation systems for these assays, and has worked to highlight the importance of interactions between drug exposure and resistance. His publications have appeared in leading papers such as Annals of Internal Medicine and The Lancet. Dr Schapiro is very active in educational initiatives; he has co-directed the Stanford University HIV Medicine Course and is involved in numerous programs for AIDS treating physicians. These have focused on both resource rich as well as resource limited settings. He has served as a member of numerous international HIV expert panels and working groups including the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee and the IAS-USA Drug Resistance Group. Dr Schapiro is a member of the Organizing and Scientific Committees of major HIV conferences and workshops. He currently runs the HIV/AIDS clinic at the National Hemophilia Center in Tel Aviv, Israel.