Quarraisha Abdool Karim, PhD, Associate Scientific Director of CAPRISA, is an NRF A-Rated scientist and infectious diseases epidemiologist. In 2014 Professor Abdool Karim was awarded the ASSAf Science-for-Society Gold Medal for ‘outstanding achievement in scientific thinking to the benefit of society’ and the South African Medical Research Council Gold Medal for her seminal scientific contributions in HIV research. She is the recipient of several prestigious local and international awards including South Africa’s highest honour, the Order of Mapungubwe, from the President of South Africa in 2013 for outstanding work in the field of HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis Research and Health Policy Development, the 2013 African Union’s Kwame Nkrumah Prize for Science and Technology, the 2014 TWAS-Lenovo Prize from The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) "for her exceptional and distinguished contributions to HIV prevention and women's health" and the 2016 L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science award for Africa and the Arab States. She is the recipient of the Department of Science and Technology Distinguished Women in Science Award in the Life, Natural and Engineering Sciences. Professor Abdool Karim’s main research focuses in understanding the evolving HIV epidemic in South Africa; factors influencing acquisition of HIV infection in adolescent girls; and sustainable strategies to introduce HAART in resource-constrained settings. She has over 170 peer reviewed publications and several books and book chapters. She holds Professorships in Clinical Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA and in Public Health at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Since 1998 she has played a central role in building the science base in southern Africa through the Columbia University - Southern African Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Programme that has trained over 600 scientists in southern Africa. Professor Abdool Karim is a visiting scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University. She is an International Associate of the National Academy of Medicine (considered one of the highest honours in the field of health and medicine), Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, Fellow of the Academy of Science of South Africa and Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. She is currently Vice-President (Southern African Region) of the African Academy of Sciences. Professor Abdool Karim is a member of the UNAIDS Scientific Expert Panel and Scientific Advisor to the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Scientific Advisory Board member of the US President’s Emergency Pan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Chair of the PEPFAR Adolescent Girls and Young Women Expert Working Group, a member of the HIV Centre Strategic Advisory Committee and the NIH OAR Microbicides Planning Group. Notably she was the Principal Investigator of the landmark CAPRISA 004 tenofovir gel trial which provided proof of concept for Microbicides highlighted by Science as one of the Top 10 scientific breakthroughs in 2010. She is married to Salim Abdool Karim and has three children.