Topic: Seth Berkley

Seth Franklin Berkley, M.D. (born in 1956 in New York, NY) is a medical epidemiologist by training and is currently President, CEO and founder of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). He received his Bachelor of Science and medical degrees from Brown University, and trained in internal medicine at Harvard University. The author of more than 85 publications, Berkley has written extensively on infectious disease and frequently serves as a media commentator on health technology development, AIDS and global health issues. Berkley has been featured on the cover of Newsweek and recognized by Wired Magazine as among "The Wired 25" - a salute to dreamers, inventors, mavericks and leaders - as well as by TIME magazine as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2009.

From 1984 to 1986, Berkley worked as a medical epidemiologist for the Center for Infectious Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA. While working for the CDC, Berkley was involved in, among other things, managing the national Toxic Shock Syndrome surveillance system. He also conducted an investigation of an outbreak of Brazilian Purpuric Fever, a disease that was killing children in Brazil, and helped to discover the etiologic agent. In 1986, on assignment from the CDC, Berkley served as an epidemiologist for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, working on routine surveillance and outbreak investigations.

A year later, while working for the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, Berkley was assigned as an epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health in Uganda. In this role, he worked to establish and manage the Ugandan surveillance system for AIDS, validate the AIDS clinical case definition for Africa and assist with the conduct and analysis of the national HIV sero-survey. Berkley played a role in helping to develop Uganda’s National AIDS Control programs, and served as an attending internal medicine physician at Mulago Hospital in Kampala.