Caroline T. Tiemessen

Caroline Tiemessen heads the Cell Biology Research Laboratory within the Centre for HIV and ST Is at the National Institute for

Communicable Diseases (NICD), and holds a joint appointment as

Research Professor in Virology at the University of the

Witwatersrand — where she also serves as the South African

Department of Science and Innovation/National Research

Foundation (DSI/NRF) Chair of HIV Vaccine Translational Research. Her laboratory, which has expertise in virology, immunology and host genetics, focusses on the study of natural HIV resistance models. These include maternal-infant HIV-I transmission for studying protective immunity to HIV-I, and the study of long term nonprogressors and elite controllers to understand natural attenuation of disease progression — to inform HIV vaccines and HIV cure. Another major focus of research efforts is towards the goal of achieving paediatric remission/cure