Prof Glenda Gray

Prof Glenda Gray, Gender Summit 5 Africa speaker

President, South African Medical Research Council (MRC), South Africa.

The gender context of interventions (download presentation here pdf icon)
Topic C: Sex and gender knowledge, improving people’s lives

Prof Gray is the President of the Medical Research Council in South Africa, a non-Executive Director at the Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU), in Soweto, South Africa, and a Professor of Paediatrics in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her prior research has focused on: Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission studies, Pediatric treatment trials, large scale HIV clinical trials (including HIV vaccine trials); TB, influenza and HPV vaccine studies in infants, children, adolescents and adults. She has been the recipient of multiple grants from the NIH, including an R21 and a U01. In 2009, she received the N'Galy Mann Lectureship award at The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI).

Prof Gray has been the Soweto Clinical Trials Unit PI since 2010. In addition, she is the HVTN Co-PI, and Director of International/Africa Programs. Gray has been involved in HIV research in South Africa for more than a decade. She is currently leading the clinical development of South Africa's first two HIV vaccines. She has expertise in HIV prevention in adolescents, and am the co-chair for a pivotal study investigating the efficacy of coitally dependent tenofovir gel, called FACTS 001. This multi-centered study involves 9 clinical trial sites, and is a purely South African run consortium, giving Gray the necessary experience and expertise in leading multi-centered studies. Prof Gray serves on the WHO/UNAIDS Vaccine Advisory Board, and on the DSMB for two vaccine studies in Africa. She chairs the standing committee on health, for the Academy of Science, and represent the academy in the South African National Research Committee. As a recently inducted member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, US, she served on the Global Health Committee, and the Vaccine Committee.