Bruce D. Walker MD

Bruce Walker, M.D. is the Director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. In addition to clinical duties as a board-certified infectious disease specialist, he conducts research focused on cellular immune responses in chronic viral infections, with a particular focus on HIV.

Dr. Walker leads an international translational clinical and basic science research effort to understand how some rare people who are infected with HIV, but have never been treated, can fight the virus with their immune system.

Dr. Walker is also an Adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa, where he collaborates with the Doris Duke Medical Research Institute at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and serves as a Principal Investigator in the HIV Pathogenesis Program, an initiative to study the evolution of the HIV and the immune responses effective in controlling this virus, as well as to contribute to training African scientists.

He is a member of the Steering Committee for the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH), a 10-year initiative funded by HHMI to build a state-of-the-art TB-HIV research facility at the heart of these dual epidemics in South Africa. Dr. Walker is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the American Association of Physicians (AAP) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences.