Sharon Lewin is the inaugural director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital; Melbourne Laureate Professor, Melbourne Laureate Professor Medicine, University of Melbourne; consultant infectious diseases physician, Alfred Hospital and Royal Melbourne Hospital and the inaugural director of the Cumming Global Centre for Pandemic Therapeutics, Melbourne, Australia
She is an infectious diseases physician and basic scientist. She completed her medical degree and PhD in virology at Monash University in 1996 and her post-doctoral fellowship with Dr David Ho at Rockefeller University in 1999. Her research focuses on understanding why HIV persists on treatment and developing clinical trials aimed at ultimately finding a cure for HIV infection. She has published over 350 publications and given over 150 major invited talks on HIV cure. In 2014 she was named Melburnian of the Year and in 2019 was awarded Officer of the Order of Australia for services to infectious diseases and HIV/AIDS. She is a Clarivate Web of Science high citation researcher (2019-now) and received the Elizabeth Blackburn Award for clinical research from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia in 2024. She is the elected President of the International AIDS Society.
