Executive Editor, Journal of the International AIDS Society and Member of Council and Chair of the Gender Policy Committee, European Association of Science Editors.

Shirin Heidari PhD is Executive Editor of the Journal of the International AIDS Society. In 2012, Dr. Heidari was appointed member of the Council of the European Associations of Science Editors, where she also serves as the chair of the Gender Policy Committee. She continuously advocates for a gender sensitive approach to research and programme delivery. As Executive Editor, she implemented an editorial policy that strongly encourages authors to disaggregate research data by sex and provide gender analyses in submitting manuscripts. Shirin has a Doctorate degree in Clinical Virology and Experimental Oncology from Karolinska Institute in Sweden. She completed her post-doctoral training with The European Vaccine Effort against HIV/AIDS and thereafter, she continued her research at the Centre of Excellence for Infectious Medicine at the Karolinska Institute. She has 10 years of experience in research and is the author of a number of publications.

Dr. Heidari will spoke about the important role scientific journals have as gatekeepers of science, how relevant sex and gender considerations in editorial policies are strikingly absent and what the research implications are. Her presentation focused on the recent results of an international survey launched by the European Association of Science Editors, which probed for existing editorial gender policies as well as opinions regarding such policies.