Maile Young Karris MD, received her MD at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii. She completed her Internal Medicine training at Oregon Health and Sciences University and her Infectious Diseases fellowship at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). She started her research career in basic science evaluating primary cell models of HIV latency. This focus evolved to the pursuit of questions evaluating the impact of antiretroviral therapy on CD4 T cell subsets and other clinical HIV outcomes. Dr. Karris also cares for people living with HIV (PLWH). Through her relationships with PLWH (many of whom are older/aging) she began to realize they were communicating personal health needs that she was not trained to manage (i.e. social isolation, loneliness, despair, severe chronic pain). This compelled her to switch her research focus to important and understudied clinical questions that impact aging with HIV. Thus, she pursued further training in aging research by becoming a Butler-Williams Scholar, a Tideswell Emerging Leader in Aging, and joining the Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology at UCSD. She also serves as a Co-Director of San Diego’s Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Clinical Investigations Core. She is a member of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group Underrepresented Populations Commitee and co-chair of the HIV and Aging Working Group, as well as the CFAR Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) and North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD).
