Chair, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health AIDS Initiative Chair
Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership

Essex earned his DVM from Michigan State University in 1967. He earned his Ph.D. from University of California, Davis, in 1970. Essex holds nine honorary doctorates and has received numerous awards, including the Lasker Award, the highest medical research award given in the United States, jointly with Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier in 1986. He has published over 500 papers and 11 books, including two editions of AIDS in Africa, and his latest, Saturday Is for Funerals.

Area of research is the possible role of human genetics in increasing or decreasing risk of HIV infection and rate of AIDS progression once infected. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified in association with HIV risk are then analyzed for genetic loci and functional properties to see how the information may be used to develop new drugs or vaccine approaches. Although such studies had been done earlier in Western populations, it seems clear that human genomes may have substantial differences in southern Africa and the HIV-1C virus has substantial differences from HIV-1B, the virus most commonly studied in the U.S. and Europe.