Program

A clinician and researcher specializing in the study and treatment of HIV infection in children and youth, Deborah Persaud is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and the Director of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

She is a graduate of the New York University School of Medicine; trained in pediatrics at Babies Hospital/ Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, where she was chief resident. Her training in Infectious diseases was at New York University School of Medicine where she was an Aaron Diamond Post Doctoral Research Fellow and a faculty member. 

She joined the Johns Hopkins’ faculty in 1997 following a visiting lectureship at the Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya. Since coming to Johns Hopkins, she has established a translational research program focused on viral reservoirs in HIV-infected children and youth as barriers to cure of HIV for which she has received the Doris Duke Clinician Scientist Award and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Scientist Award.

Dr. Persaud has published seminal studies on latent HIV reservoirs in children, and their clinical implications for treatment of this population. More recently, she has conducted key studies on use of therapeutic HIV vaccines to target the latent HIV reservoir.

Her research focus has also included development of molecular assays to facilitate monitoring of HIV drug resistance in resource- limited settings through use of dried blood spots. She is the Scientific Chair of the HIV Cure committee for the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Group where she will play a key role in leading the charge of identifying ways to eliminate HIV reservoirs in children and youth.