Dr. Karin Nielsen Saines is Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCLA Children’s Hospital and a member of the UCLA faculty since 1996. She is also an attending physician for Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Mattel Children’s Hospital and co-director of the Care4Families HIV clinic at UCLA. She was born in Rio de Janeiro where she obtained medical training from the University of Rio de Janeiro and completed a pediatric residency at the Hospital dos Servidores do Estado, also in Rio. At the University of California Los Angeles she completed a clinical and research fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases and obtained a master’s degree in Public Health/ Epidemiology. Dr. Nielsen’s main area of research has been perinatal/ pediatric infections particularly in the area of HIV. She has worked extensively in collaborative clinical studies in the U.S., Brazil, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia focused on prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV and HIV transmission between couples, as well as treatment of this disease in children, adolescents and adults. She has also conducted multiple studies evaluating the pathogenesis of congenital ZIKA, CMV and other congenital infections. She is a lead investigator in the Adolescent Trials Network Study of early treatment of HIV infection in at risk youth in Los Angeles and New Orleans. Dr. Nielsen has mentored multiple medical students, residents, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from the Americas, Europe, sub Saharan Africa and Asia.
