Research Interests

Throughout her career, Dr. Duerr has been interested in public health issues of resource-limited settings, with a special emphasis on HIV and women's health. She trained in laboratory science, medicine, and infectious disease epidemiology - she received a B.Sc. degree from McGill University, a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.D. from Harvard University and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University. For over 20 years, her research has focused on HIV. Her initial epidemiologic research focused on parameters associated with HIV transmission from women to infants in Rwanda and on fully characterizing the clinical course of HIV infections in US women. More recently, her work has been focused on prevention – specifically, on an intervention among African women to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission via breastfeeding and on trials of prophylactic HIV vaccines as Director for Scientific Affairs of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN). The HVTN is an international partnership of researchers with 25 sites on 4 continents conducting studies of the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy studies of HIV vaccine candidates. She has also conducted research in non-human primates investigating ways to increase vaccine-induced immunity at mucosal surfaces, the site of infection for most pathogens.  She has a long-standing interest in clinical trials and is currently working on studies of antiretroviral treatment to prevent onward HIV transmission in Peru.  Her work in Peru also involves investigations of the impact of initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) during early HIV infection, including effects on neurological outcomes and implications for HIV cure strategies.

Recent Publications (PubMed)

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