Thomas J. Hope , PH.D. is a Professor in the Departments of Cell and Molecular Biology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Feinberg School of Medicine, and in Biomedical Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University.  Dr. Hope's laboratory has been a pioneer in the use of cell biology approaches to study HIV, providing images and movies of HIV interacting with cells and tissues.  For the past 25 years, his research has focused on HIV Cellular Virology.  More recently this focus has expanded to HIV-related mucosal immunology, HIV transmission, and HIV Prevention Science.

Douglas D. Richman , MD, is Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and the Florence Seeley Riford Chair in AIDS Research. He is Director of the Center for AIDS Research at UC San Diego, Director of the UC San Diego AIDS Research Institute, and staff physician at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. Dr. Richman's laboratory, which was the first to identify HIV drug resistance, joined two others in identifying latently infected CD4 cells as the obstacle to eradication of HIV with potent antiretroviral therapy. His laboratory also described the dynamics of the neutralizing antibody response to HIV and the rapidity of viral escape and evolution in response to this selective pressure.  The major current focus of Dr. Richman's laboratory is the latent HIV reservoir and strategies to achieve eradication of this reservoir. 

Mario Stevenson  is Professor of Medicine and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. For the past 30 years his research has focused on uncovering processes regulating the interplay between HIV-1 and its host, as well as mechanisms of viral persistence.