BRUCE WALKER, M.D. - Physician and AIDS Researcher
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Following graduation from the University of Colorado, Bruce Walker attended Case Western Reserve Medical School. After internship and residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, he specialized in HIV/AIDS at the time the global crisis was just being recognized. Although he is a physician caring for persons infected with HIV, he spends the majority of his time doing basic science research to determine the way in which the body defends itself against HIV and other chronic viral infections. His laboratory was the first to define key elements of the immune response to HIV that are critical for vaccine development, which was highlighted in the PBS NOVA program entitled “Surviving AIDS”.

Current efforts focus on rebuilding immune responses to the AIDS virus in persons already infected. In addition, he has been involved in AIDS research in Africa for over 15 years and procured funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to build a recently-completed state-of-the-art biomedical research institute in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, where he heads an HIV research effort at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine. He has also spearheaded efforts to provide HIV treatment in resource-constrained settings, including pilot projects in rural KwaZulu Natal that are currently underway. This community-based comprehensive care and treatment clinic for persons infected with HIV provides the anti-HIV drug cocktail through funds obtained from philanthropic support.

Dr. Walker is a member of the American Association of Immunologists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He is the recipient of a Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Professorship and a Merit Award from the NIH, and has recently been named a Howard Hughes Investigator. He has been a member of the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School since 1980 and has been affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital for the same period. He is also Professor of Medicine at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa.