Founding Director, David Satcher Global Health Equity Institute
Professor of Medicine & Microbiology, Biochemistry, and Immunology
Moorehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia

Barney S. Graham is an infectious diseases physician and scientist. He has a BA from Rice University, MD from the University of Kansas, and PhD from Vanderbilt University. He retired as Deputy Director of the NIAID Vaccine Research Center in 2021 and is now Professor and Director of the David Satcher Global Health Equity Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. He is an inventor on vaccines and monoclonal antibodies approved for human use to prevent or treat RSV, COVID-19, and Ebola. He has authored >500 scientific publications, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Inventors Hall-of-Fame and has received multiple awards for the advancement of science. Time magazine recognized him as one of the world’s 100 most influential individuals and a Hero of the Year in 2021 and as one of the 100 most influential in health in 2024.

Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics
Professor of Microbiology, Medicine, and Neurosurgery
Co-Director, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases
The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. Richard Whitley is a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics and Co-Division Director of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. He also holds the titles of Loeb Eminent Scholar Chair in Pediatrics; Professor of Microbiology, Medicine, & Neurosurgery; Senior Scientist, Department of Gene Therapy; and Co-Founder and Co-Director, Alabama Drug Discovery Alliance.

An expert on how antiviral therapies fight infections in children and adults, Dr. Whitley’s research spans four decades, during which he has published more than 380 scholarly articles on pediatric infectious disease. In 2009, Dr. Whitley was appointed as one of 14 members of a panel advising President Barack Obama about the H1N1 virus. He and his peers from across the country spent three weeks in July writing an 86-page report to President Obama on the country's preparations for the pandemic flu.

After attaining his medical degree from George Washington University School of Medicine in 1971, Dr. Whitley completed his pediatric internship/residency and fellowship in infectious disease and virology at UAB from 1971 to 1976. Dr. Whitley’s honors are numerous and his professional organization involvement extensive, including NIAID AIDS Task Force membership; NIAID DSMB Clinical Trials Committee (Chairman); Associate Editor, Journal of Infectious Diseases (2005-Present); President, International Society for Antiviral Research (1988-1990); AAP Award for Excellence in Pediatric Research (1991); Elion Award, International Society for Antiviral Research (2004); Chair, BSC, CCID, CDC (2005-2010), UAB President’s Medal (2007), NIH National Adv Allergy and Infectious Disease Council (2008-2012), and President, Infectious Diseases Society of America (2009). In 2013, he was named as the inaugural recipient of the Distinguished Clinical Research Scholar and Educator in Residence at the NIH Clinical Center. He has received numerous other awards and lectureships, including the 2016 UAB SOM Dean’s Excellence Award in Research for Senior Faculty, the Department of Pediatrics Lifetime Achievement Award in Pediatric Healthcare in 2016, and Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Irish Academy of Medicine in 2018. Dr. Whitley received the Alexander Fleming Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Infectious Diseases Society at their annual meeting in 2018. He received the 2020 National Foundation for Infectious Diseases John P. Utz Leadership Award for his work in the field of clinical virology in December 2020, and in 2022, he received the John Howland Award from the American Pediatric Society. He is currently the chair of the NIH-NIAID COVID-19 Data Safety and Monitoring Board.

Professor of Medicine
Academic Vice Chair, Department of Medicine
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Schooley is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and infectious disease fellowships at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in 1981 and shifted his research focus from herpesgroup viruses as recognition of the AIDS epidemic developed. His early research efforts were directed at the definition of the role of HIV-1 specific cellular immune responses in the immunopathogenesis of HIV-1 infection. He also became heavily involved in both preclinical and clinical antiretroviral chemotherapeutic research.

He was recruited to the University of Colorado in 1990 as Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases where he developed an integrated HIV program clinical care and research program. He was elected Chair of the NIAID’s AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) in 1995 and led that group until 2002 during which time the ACTG performed many of the seminal studies that defined modern antiretroviral chemotherapy. He served as a member of the DHHS Task Force for AIDS Drug Development Task Force and of the Levine Committee. While at the University of Colorado he also served as the founding Chair of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI). In 1999 he and his successor in the leadership of the ACTG, Dr. Constance Benson, led the transformation of the ACTG from its initial US domestic focus to its current multinational composition. This international expansion enabled the conduct of HPTN 052 which was largely conducted with the clinical trials infrastructure established by the ACTG’s international expansion.

In 2005 he joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego where he served as Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases until last year. He is currently, a Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine, Senior Director of International Initiatives of UCSD and a Co-Director of the UCSD Center for AIDS Research. At UCSD he has developed a multidisciplinary collaboration between UCSD and Mozambique’s major university, the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, that is based on the structure of the partnerships by which the ACTG accomplished its international expansion the previous decade. His research interests have been in the diagnosis, pathogenesis and therapy of viral infections and in global health. More recently he has become interested in the use of bacteriophages as therapeutic agents to treat multidrug resistant bacterial infections.