Catherine Hankins

Catherine Hankins is Senior Fellow, Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development; Professor of Public and Population Health, School of Population and Global Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University; Co-Chair Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force.

A community medicine specialist, Professor Hankins was principal investigator of The Canadian Women’s HIV Study, studies involving prisoners and people who inject drugs, and population-based epidemiological studies before joining the UN. Chief Scientific Adviser to UNAIDS in Geneva for a decade, Cate led the scientific knowledge translation team focused on ensuring ethical and participatory HIV prevention trial conduct, convening mathematical modelling teams, and supporting country implementation of proven biomedical HIV prevention modalities. She developed Good Participatory Practice Guidelines for trials of Emerging Pathogens for the World Health Organization. She chairs the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership Scientific Advisory Committee and the US National Institutes of Health HIV Prevention Trials Network Scientific Advisory Group. Honorary Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, she is a trustee of the HIV Research Trust and International AIDS Society Industry Liaison Forum member. Keenly interested in scientific capacity development and advancing women in global health and science, she was Scientific Chair of six annual African INTEREST conferences on HIV treatment, pathogenesis, and prevention research (2015 Harare, 2016 Yaoundé, 2017 Lilongwe, 2018 Kigali, 2019 Accra, 2020 Windhoek) and Co-Chair of EECA INTERACT 2019. She was named to the Order of Canada in 2013.