Bruce Walker

Director
Ragon Institute Of MGH, MIT And Harvard

Dr. Walker is founding Director of Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Practice at MIT, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. Along with his clinical duties as a board-certified Infectious disease specialist, his research focuses on cellular immune responses in chronic human viral infections, with particular focus on HIV immunology and vaccine development. He leads an international translational clinical and basic science research effort to understand how some rare people who are infected with HIV, but have never been treated, can fight the virus with their immune system. Dr. Walker is also adjunct professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa, collaborating with the Doris Duke Medical Research Institute at University of KwaZulu-Natal and is a Principal Investigator in the HIV Pathogenesis Program, an initiative to study the evolution of the HIV and the immune responses effective in controlling this virus, as well as to contribute to training African scientists. He is co-founder of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH, recently renamed the Africa Health Research Institute), an initiative initially funded by HHMI to build a state-of-the-art TB-HIV research facility at the heart of these dual epidemics in South Africa. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the American Association of Physicians (AAP), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences.