Founding Scientific Director, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
David D. Ho is the Founding Scientific Director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He received his degrees from California Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ho has been at the forefront of AIDS research for 40 years. His elegant studies unraveled the dynamic nature of HIV replication in vivo and revolutionized our basic understanding of this horrific disease. This knowledge led him to champion combination antiretroviral therapy that resulted in unprecedented control of HIV in patients. An automatic death sentence has been transformed into a manageable condition, and over 25 million people worldwide are currently on such a therapy. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Ho’s research team has devoted considerable efforts to develop novel strategies to diagnose, treat and prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Dr. Ho has received fourteen honorary doctorates. He was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1996 and the recipient of a Presidential Medal from Bill Clinton in 2001. He was also inducted into the California Hall of Fame. Dr. Ho was also recognized by the Kingdom of Thailand with the Prince Mahidol Award in Medicine, and he was given the Distinguished Alumni Award by Caltech. Dr. Ho serves as a member of the Trustees of Caltech, and he was a board member of the MIT Corporation for 12 years and Harvard Board of Overseers for 6 years. He is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine as well as the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
