Dr. Connick became chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in April 2016, succeeding Stephen A. Klotz, MD, who had held the position since 2009 (and 2008 on an interim basis). A 1988 Harvard Medical School graduate, Dr. Connick later completed an internship and internal medicine residency at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York and an infectious disease fellowship at the University of Colorado. Prior to joining the faculty at the UA College of Medicine, she was medical director at the UC Boulder Clinical and Translational Research Center and chair of the Radiopharmaceutical Oversight Committee, the Radioactive Drug Research Committee, and the Human Use Committee on Ionizing Radiation at UC Denver. She held joint appointments as an adjunct professor in the UC Department of Integrative Physiology and the UC Department of Immunology and Microbiology. She also was an attending physician at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colo. Dr. Connick is a member of the Women’s Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS and the Women’s Interagency HIV Study External Advisory Board. She recently was appointed to the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council, and previously assisted in efforts to identify priorities for the Women and Girls component of the Trans-NIH Plan for HIV-Related Research (2008-12). She also served on the Antiviral Drug Advisory Committee (2011-14) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Since 1995, she has held multiple leadership roles with the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), a large HIV clinical trials organizations that plays a significant role in standards of care for HIV infection and opportunistic diseases related to HIV and AIDS in the United States and developing world. Dr. Connick currently is vice chair of the ACTG Women’s Health Inter-Network Scientific Committee. In 2014, she was named to the scientific advisory committee of amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and in 2015 she became a Fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America. In addition, Dr. Connick serves on the editorial boards of the Infectious Disease News, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Journal of the International AIDS Society, and as a reviewer for Lancet, Nature and several other infectious disease-related journals.
Dr. Connick’s research, much of it funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), targets HIV immunopathogenesis — disease development involving an immune response or a related component. She has been involved in clinical trials as well as laboratory-based translational research studies of HIV-1 infection for more than 20 years, including studies of acute HIV infection, immune reconstitution, cardiovascular disease and HIV pathogenesis among women. More recently, she has focused on strategies to develop a cure for HIV infection. Throughout her career, Dr. Connick has received research funding totaling nearly $14.2 million as principal investigator, $43.5 million as co-investigator and $121.5 million in other roles