IAS members' meeting

With more than 20 years of public health and international development experience, Birgit Poniatowski was appointed to the position of IAS Executive Director in November 2020, following more than five years at the organization leading an expanding team responsible for resource mobilization, sustainable partnerships across diverse sectors and key strategic initiatives.

Prior to joining the IAS, she was the Director for Investment and Partnerships at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, and earlier managed partnerships and supported the organization’s multi-stakeholder governance processes at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. She was educated at Bonn and Heidelberg Universities in Germany and International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. She holds a PhD from Heidelberg University, Germany.

Dr. Jennifer Kates is senior vice president and director of the Global Health & HIV Policy Program at KFF, where she oversees policy analysis and research focused on the U.S. government’s role in global health and on the global and domestic HIV epidemics. She has also helped to lead KFF’s work on the COVID-19 pandemic. Widely regarded as an expert in the field, she regularly publishes and presents on global health and HIV policy issues and is particularly known for her work analyzing donor government investments in global health; assessing and mapping the U.S. government’s global health architecture, programs, and funding; and tracking and analyzing major U.S. HIV programs and financing, and key trends in the HIV epidemic, an area she has been working in for close to 30 years. Dr. Kates has served on numerous federal and private sector advisory committees on global health and HIV issues. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, a Master in Public Affairs degree from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Massachusetts. She received her Ph.D. in health policy from George Washington University.

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), the immediate Past President of the International AIDS Society and co-chairs the IAS Towards a Cure Initiative.