Beatrice H. Hahn

Beatrice H. Hahn, MD, is a Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Hahn received her medical degree from the Technical University of Munich and pursued postdoctoral studies in human retrovirology at the National Cancer Institute. She joined the University of Alabama in 1985, where she served as Co-Director of the Center for AIDS Research from 2003-2011. She became a faculty member at Penn in 2011. Dr. Hahn is recognized for her work deciphering the primate origins of human AIDS viruses and the malaria parasites Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. She is known particularly for developing non-invasive methods to study the evolution, biology and zoonotic potential of microbes that infect endangered primate species. Her seminal contributions in understanding human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections include developing the first molecular clone of HIV-1, tracing the origins of HIV-1 and HIV-2 to non-human primate species in Africa, determining the pathogenic impact of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection on wild chimpanzee populations, and making fundamental observations in the molecular and virologic characterization of numerous HIV and SIV genes and strains.  Dr. Hahn’s recent work describes groundbreaking studies identifying the origin of P. falciparum, the most deadly form of malaria, in West African gorillas, findings that will spearhead new research to understand host/pathogen interactions that underlie the transmission and pathogenicity of malaria. Dr. Hahn is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences.