Sharon Lewin is the inaugural director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital; Melbourne Laureate Professor, The University of Melbourne; consultant infectious diseases physician, Alfred Hospital and Royal Melbourne Hospital and a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Practitioner Fellow. She is an infectious diseases physician and basic scientist. She completed her medical degree and PhD in virology at Monash University in 1996 and her post-doctoral fellowship with Dr David Ho at Rockefeller University in 1999. Her research focuses on understanding why HIV persists on treatment and developing clinical trials aimed at ultimately finding a cure for HIV infection. She has published over 300 publications and given over 100 major invited talks on HIV cure. In 2014 she was named Melburnian of the Year and in 2019 was named a Clarivate Web of Science high citation researcher. She is President-Elect of the International AIDS Society. She leads a large national network funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia called The Australian Partnership in Research for Infectious Disease Emergencies (APPRISE) which focuses on pandemic preparedness and started in Australia in 2016. Scientists from the Doherty Institute were the first to isolate and share the SARS COV2 virus outside of China and have a broad program of research focused on testing, treatments and vaccines for COVID19.