Yale Clinical and Community Research and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) are delighted to welcome Malaysian HIV physician-scientist, Dr. Iskandar Azwa, to New Haven as part of the CIRA-sponsored 2017 International Visiting Fellowship program, from April 17-21. Dr. Azwa is an Associate Professor of infectious diseases at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with an interest in sexual health and HIV medicine. He is presently the Clinical Lead for the HIV outpatient and inpatient service at University Malaya Medical Centre, the country's leading university hospital.
Dr. Azwa's research interests center around biomedical approaches to HIV prevention, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), among key populations, human papilloma virus (HPV) infection, anal cancer in men who have sex with men (MSM), and HIV associated co-morbidities. He is the site principal investigator for several international collaborative HIV clinical trials. Dr. Azwa’s research and clinical work have led to several achievements, including scale-up of HIV prevention services in his hospital's HIV unit. In fact, his clinic was one of the first sites in the country to introduce non-occupational post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and PrEP clinical services to patients. Likewise, as a site for the NIH-funded START (Strategic Timing of Anti-Retroviral Treatment) study, Dr. Azwa’s HIV clinic was one of the first sites to offer universal antiretroviral treatment to HIV-positive patients in Malaysia.
Dr. Azwa's visit to Yale is part of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS' collaborative Visiting International Fellows program. During his fellowship, Dr. Azwa will be sharing his research and clinical experience with members of the campus community. He will be meeting with faculty, clinicians, pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellows, and others to foster new and innovative collaborative research opportunities between Yale and the University of Malaya. Dr. Azwa will also be delivering a talk on his research at CIRA's International Research Meeting, to be held Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at 3:30pm at 135 College Street, Suite 200. Members of the campus community who are interested in meeting with Dr. Azwa during his fellowship may contact his Yale faculty sponsor, Dr. Jeffrey Wickersham at jeffrey.wickersham@yale.edu.