Appointment of Dr Catherine Hankins, Deputy Director, Science at the Amsterdam

The Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Catherine (Cate) Hankins as Deputy Director, Science. Catherine Hankins BA (Hons) MD MSc FRCPC is a community medicine specialist who joins AIGHD from UNAIDS in Geneva, where she has been Chief Scientific Adviser since 2002. At AIGHD, she will oversee a
range of HIV prevention research, including intervention and demonstration projects, as well as scientific knowledge translation. She will participate actively in program evaluation and research to inform policy development, while teaching in the Institute’s new Global Health Research Masters
program. In addition, she will represent the Institute in international fora.

Dr Hankins was editor of the science blog HIV This Week (http://hivthisweek.unaids.org), comanaged the WHO-UNAIDS HIV Vaccine Initiative, and headed up UNAIDS’ knowledge translation team focusing on ethical and participatory clinical trial conduct, communication of prevention trial results, and support to country implementation of proven biomedical HIV prevention interventions, such as voluntary medical male circumcision. From 2002 to 2005 she supervised the UNAIDS care, prevention, and epidemiology/economics teams, supporting expanded access to antiretroviral treatment and effective prevention strategies, estimating costs for care, prevention, and impact
alleviation, and tracking resource flows for HIV programming in low- and middle-income countries. She coordinated HIV technical inputs into the Global Fund Technical Review Panel and monitored research developments in HIV vaccines, microbicides, male circumcision, and pre-exposure prophylaxis. From 2005 to 2007, she led the UNAIDS human rights, best practice, and gender teams.

Dr Hankins is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and former President of the Canadian Association for HIV Research. She was a member of the Canadian National Advisory
Committee on AIDS for eight years, chairing subcommittees on epidemiology, women, and injection drug use. She was the principal investigator of the Canadian Women’s HIV Study for a
decade. She chaired a variety of Canadian research peer review committees and was principal investigator for studies involving prisoners, people who inject drugs, and sex workers, as well as
population-based epidemiological studies. She trained in medicine at the University of Calgary and in community medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She was a
consultant for UNDP, WHO, UNFPA, and CIDA.

Dr Hankins is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the US National Institutes of Health HIV Prevention Trials Network, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, the WHO-UNAIDS HIV Vaccine Initiative Advisory Committee, and the Global HIV Prevention Working Group. She is an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, England in the Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, the current Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), and consultant science adviser at UNAIDS. Dr Hankins has authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers.
For more information (media relations):
Andrea de Graaf, AIGHD and PharmAccess Foundation
t : +316 1859 6770,
e : a.degraaf@pharmaccess.org

For more information (other relations):
Jacqueline van Tongeren, AIGHD
t: +316 5120 9900,
e: j.vantongeren@aighd.org