Scientific Comittee

Jordi Blanch is Psychiatrist. He is  currently Director of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Hospital Universitari de Santa Maria de Lleida. Since 2009 he is the chief of the Outpatient Clinic of the Psychiatry and Psychology Department of Hospital Clínic of Barcelona. Chair for Educational Affairs of the Clinical Institute of Neurosciences in Hospital Clínic of Barcelona.

He also is Associate Professor, University of Barcelona. Dr. Blanch is member of the Organization of AIDS Psychiatrists and  member of the HIV/AIDS Psychiatry Section of the World Psychiatry Association. He is a founding member and Coordinator of the International Symposium on Psychiatry and HIV since 2008.

He is temporary Assistant Professor at the University of Torino (Department of Medical Sciences, Infectious Diseases). Infectious Diseases Specialist (University of Torino, Italy); Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand). He is member of the Panel of the Italian Guidelines on the Use of Antiretrovirals and Management of patients living with HIV.

He has experience as a Clinicians in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine (Sudan, Thailand, Burundi); several phase II, III and IV studies in antiretroviral treatment trials.

His main field of interest is the clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenetics of anti-infective agents (antiretroviral, antibiotic, antifungals) and the central nervous system complication of HIV-infection.

She is currently working as senior physician at the Department of Infectious Diseases and responsible of the Neurovirology Research Unit at the Research Division of Immunology, Transplantation and Infectious Diseases of San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, and as contract Professor of Infectious Diseases at San Raffaele University.

Her research group is mainly involved in studies on HIV Infection of the Central Nervous System, Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy and other HIV-associated CNS complications.

She is a panel member of the Italian HIV Treatment Guidelines, of the EACS Co-morbidities and of the Opportunistic Infections Guidelines, and of the NIH/CDC/IDSA Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Opportunistic Infections.in HIV-Infected Adults and Adolescents.

Guida da Ponte, M.D., Ph.D., psychiatrist, Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health – Centro Hospitalar Barreiro-Montijo, Portugal. One of the major fields of practice is with HIV patients with a psychiatric outpatient clinic dedicated to this condition. Author of scientific publications, mainly in the areas of neurocognitive disorders, depression, anxiety and psychopharmacology and antiretroviral interactions.

Scott Letendre, M.D., is Professor of Medicine in Residence in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He graduated from Georgetown University School of Medicine and, following his residency in internal medicine at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, he completed fellowships in Infectious Disease Medicine at Duke University and in Neurologic HIV Research at UCSD. At UCSD, Dr. Letendre performs translational, patient-oriented research of the central nervous system complications of chronic infections, including HIV, HCV, and CMV. As part of a multidisciplinary research team, he conducts treatment trials of neurocognitively impaired individuals and analyzes their response to therapy as well as studies of the pharmacokinetics of antiretrovirals, the effect of comorbidities, and biomarker correlates of disease. Dr. Letendre is also an investigator in the UCSD unit of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group.

He participates in several international research projects, including projects based in China, India, Zambia, and Romania. Dr

Dr. Esteban Martínez is a senior consultant in the Infectious Diseases Unit of the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. He is also coordinator of the Treatment Program for Facial Lipoatrophy in people with HIV of the Health Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya and Associate Professor of Medicine. His main fields of interest are the optimization of antiretroviral therapy and comorbidities in adults with HIV infection. He is a member of the steering committee of the European neat-id network for the treatment of HIV, hepatitis and global infectious diseases and research director of the Reprieve clinical trial, the largest conducted in the prevention of vascular events in HIV.

Dr. Esteban Martínez has been president of the Spanish HIV Study Group (GeSida) between 2019 and 2021, and is the president-elect of the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) for the period 2020-2024. He is a founding member and Coordinator of the International Symposium on Psychiatry and HIV since 2008.

Jose A. Muñoz-Moreno is a clinician and researcher at the Lluita contra les Infeccions Foundation, located in the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital, in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). He earned the Ph.D. degree in Neurosciences in 2012 (Cum Laude), and currently he is also a collaborating professor with the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).

Muñoz-Moreno is involved in projects that address psychology and the human behaviour associated with HIV infection. In terms of study, he mostly investigates the neurocognitive features of HIV infection, the impact of HIV and antiretroviral treatments on quality of life and emotional status, and adherence to antiretroviral therapy.

Muñoz-Moreno’s recent work particularly focuses on assessment methods to detect HIV-related neurocognitive changes and the current profile of neurocognitive impairment in people living with HIV infection.

Ignacio Pérez-Valero MD PhD is a 43 years-old Consultant Physician of Internal Medicine at the Reina Sofía University Hospital. Córdoba, Spain.

Annemiek Schadé works as a psychiatrist since 1994 and since 2005 at the HIV Expert and Treatment Center on HIV and Mental Health and as a consultant at the University Hospital VU Medical Center in Amsterdam. She is a trainer and tutor for medical residents and interns psychiatry. The past years, she provided trainings and E-learning on HIV and Mental Health. She published a study book (in Dutch) and (research) articles on HIV and Mental Health, in English and Dutc

Milton Wainberg is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Director of Global Mental Health Research in the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University. He is Director of the NIMH-funded Columbia University Global Mental Health Implementation Science T32-Post Doctoral Fellowship, NIMH/Fogarty International-funded Portuguese-speaking African countries Mental Health Implementation Research Training Program, Founding Chair of the Caucus of Global Mental Health and Psychiatry of the American Psychiatric Association, and Medical Director of the Columbia University HIV Mental Health Training Project. Dr. Wainberg is the Chair of the Mental Health HIV Clinical Guidelines Committee of the New York State Department of Health/AIDS Institute, and has been Principal investigator or investigator of multiple NIMH, NIAAA, NIDA and CDC studies addressing the intersection of mental illness, substance use and abuse, HIV-associated fatigue, sexual compulsivity and HIV prevention and adherence to care, as well as the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness, HIV, race/ethnicity and being a sexual minority. Dr. Wainberg is the Principal Investigators of the NIMH-funded PRIDE sSA – Partnerships in Research to Implement and Disseminate Sustainable and Scalable Evidence-based Practices: sub-Saharan Africa which comprises a large scale up study delivering comprehensive efficacious and sustainable psychiatric care in three Provinces of Mozambique, and capacity building of a collaborative research network that will train service providers, investigators and policy-makers from Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia. His research to practice work aims to decrease the global mental health treatment and research gaps.

Alan Winston is a Professor of HIV and Genitourinary Medicine at Imperial College and Consultant Physician at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. He has an M.D. in antiretroviral clinical pharmacology and his research focuses on non-infectious co-morbidities associated with HIV-disease in the modern antiretroviral era, with a strong focus on central nervous system complications.

Dr. Alan Winston qualified from Glasgow University and undertook training in general medicine and HIV medicine in the UK and Australia. He leads the HIV and GU clinical trials unit at St. Mary’s hospital which runs over 20 studies at one time.

He is the principal clinical investigator on the POPPY study, a cohort study describing the incidence and nature of co-morbidities in HIV.