Training Advisory Committee

Dr. Bekker is Director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa and chief operating officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. She was president of the International AIDS Society from 2016 to 2018. She is a physician-scientist and infectious disease specialist focusing on programmatic and action research around antiretroviral therapy rollout, TB integration, and HIV prevention in key populations. She is principal investigator of the UCT Clinical Trials Unit funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and is actively involved in the work of its associated clinical research sites and networks. Dr. Bekker’s PhD at Rockefeller University was funded by a Fogarty International Center research training grant.

Dr. Kamya is Professor and Dean, School of Medicine, Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Uganda. He has supervised the research of over 50 graduate students (including PhD students) in Uganda and currently supervising six PhD/postdoc students. He has been conducting malaria and HIV research for over twenty years. He currently serves the PI or co-PI of multiple malaria and HIV research projects. He has experience with NIH D43 training grants, including as Program Director of an HIV/AIDS training grant on implementation science capacity building at Makerere University.

Dr. Moore is Chair of Virus-Host Dynamics at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the National Instutute for Communicable Diseases, both in South Africa. She is also an Associate Professor at Wits. She co-directs a team of scientists and graduate students who work in the field of HIV vaccine discovery, combining virology and immunology. She holds a joint appointment as Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research (CAPRISA) Honorary Senior Scientist in Virus-Host Dynamics at CAPRISA, University of KwaZuluNatal. Her work has focused predominantly on HIV neutralizing antibodies and their interplay with the evolving virus. More recently, Dr. Moore has been responsible for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variants in South Africa.

Dr. Noormahomed is Professor of Parasitology and Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) in Maputo, Mozambique. In 2008, she started a partnership between UEM and University of California, San Diego (UCSD) that was expanded under the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI), for which she serves as Program Director. In that capacity, she has helped reinvigorate research development in Mozambique. Supported by the US Department of State through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the National Institutes of Health, the UEM-UCSD MEPI seeks to develop innovative strategies for teaching physicians, develop research capacity and bioinformatics and create communities of practice with common goals.

Dr. Sidat is Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health, UEM Faculty of Medicine. He served as Dean of the UEM Faculty of Medicine from 2012-2019. He is also a member of the Mozambican Academy of Sciences. Dr. Sidat is a clinical epidemiologist with an interest in clinical and social determinants affecting the scale-up of HIV treatment programs and retention in care in Mozambique. Dr. Sidat has substantial experience in mentoring MPH, PhD, and post-graduate trainees in research practices in Mozambique and also has  experience with other D43 programs.