David Ho

David D. Ho, a Taiwanese American physician and scientist, is the Founding Scientific Director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Ho has been at the forefront of AIDS research for 40 years, with his studies contributing significantly to our understanding of HIV replication. His advocacy for combination antiretroviral therapy has offered unprecedented control of HIV, transforming it from an automatic death sentence into a manageable disease. Currently, over 25 million people worldwide are on such therapy. In addition to his research on HIV, Dr. Ho’s team is also actively engaged in developing strategies to diagnose, treat, and prevent COVID-19 infection.

Dr. Ho is an active member of the scientific and academic community. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica (Taiwan), the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Dr. Ho serves as a member of the Trustees of Caltech and has previously served on the board of the MIT Corporation for 12 years and Harvard Board of Overseers for six years. He has also given commencement addresses at Caltech and MIT and has delivered the Ubben Lecture at DePauw University.

Dr. Ho has received fourteen honorary doctorates and numerous awards for his scientific accomplishments. In addition to his remarkable record of research publications exceeding 500 papers, Dr. Ho has also been recognized with the "2014 Distinguished Research Career Award" from the College of Veterinary Medicine - Center for Retrovirus Research. He was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1996 and received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Clinton in 2001. His work has been recognized globally, with the Kingdom of Thailand awarding him the Prince Mahidol Award in Medicine and the Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence. He received his degrees from the California Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School.