Quarraisha Abdool Karim is a South African infectious diseases epidemiologist whose research focus is on understanding the evolving HIV epidemic in South Africa; factors influencing acquisition of HIV infection in adolescent girls and development and evaluation of prevention interventions for HIV prevention in young women.

Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim’s scientific contributions include over 300 peer-reviewed journal publications, including several in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Science, and Nature. Her most highly cited journal article, jointly first-authored with Salim Abdool Karim (Science 2010; 329: 1168-1174), has over 2000 citations. She is an Editor of the 6^th, 7^th and 8^th Editions of the Oxford University Textbook on Global Public Health, which is one of the most widely used textbooks used to teach public health throughout the world.  She is the co-editor of a book on HIV/AIDS in South Africa (Cambridge University Press), which is used as a reference text in South Africa and a book on HIV Clinical Trials (Springer).

Since 2020, she has played a leading role in the South Africa’s response to the Covid-19 epidemic and served on the South African government’s Ministerial Advisory Committee for Covid-19 and is a member of the Executive of the World Health Organisation’s Covid-19 Solidarity treatment trial and the WHO Covid-19 Solidarity vaccine trial.

She is a global leader in science serving as the President of The World Academy of Science (TWAS) – she is the first woman to hold this position in TWAS. Her global leadership in HIV prevention is illustrated by her roles in several national and international committees and advisory groups. She is the UNAIDS Ambassador for Adolescents and HIV, Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of PEPFAR and Chair of the PEPFAR Adolescent Girls and Young Women Expert Working Group. She is a consultant to WHO, UNAIDS and UNDP on several AIDS-related expert committees on gender, ethics, treatment, and research capacity building. Most recently, she was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres as the Co-chair of the 10-Member Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) Group to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She served, until 2017, as the Vice-President of the African Academy of Sciences advancing collaboration with research institutes across the African continent. She previously served as the Vice-Chair of the South African Medical Research Council Board. 

She is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, the Academy of Science of South Africa, the African Academy of Sciences, and The World Academy of Sciences. She has been acknowledged as one of 50 all-time “Legends of South African Science” by the Academy of Science of South Africa.