Colonel Jerome Kim

Colonel Jerome Kim, M.D. ’84, deputy director and chief of the Department of Molecular Virology and Pathogenesis at the U.S. Military HIV Research Program (MHRP) in Bethesda, Md., won the 2013 John F. Maher Award for Research Excellence from the Department of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University. The award recognizes Kim’s contribution to a 2012 article in The New England Journal of Medicine describing the analysis of immunological correlates from the RV144 HIV vaccine trial, which involved more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand and provided evidence that a vaccine can prevent HIV infection in humans. Kim lived in Thailand in 2009 when he led the first clinical trial to show the HIV vaccine’s efficacy. He is currently heading efforts to plan follow-up trials of this vaccine candidate in both Thailand and southern Africa in collaboration with the Gates Foundation, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and private partners.