Melissa-Rose is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Medical Virology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. Her postgraduate studies in Virology, also at UCT, began in the characterization of poxviruses and later transitioned to investigating the HIV transmission bottleneck. She obtained her PhD in 2014, investigating the evolution of transmitted HIV-1 in women from KwaZulu-Natal with differing disease progression profiles.
She currently overseas an HIV Cure research program at UCT, which includes studies characterizing the size and timing of establishment of the latent HIV reservoir and identifying viral factors that drive viral persistence, with a particular focus on African women.
