Julie Overbaugh

Overbaugh pioneered studies of HIV transmission and pathogenesis in affected cohorts, including African women and children. With Joan Kreiss, she helped establish and foster the Kenya Research Program, a model for integrating basic research into interdisciplinary, population-based studies. She is a leader in understanding infection, neutralizing antibodies, and immune escape in HIV-1 infection, particularly in infants and in the setting of re-infection. She discovered that infants can develop potent, broadly neutralizing antibodies rapidly and that such antibodies have limited somatic hypermutation, in striking contrast to what is observed in adults.