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Robert Gallo is currently the Director of the Institute of Human Virology and Division of Basic Science at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. Prior to becoming director of the Institute in 1996, Dr. Gallo spent 30 years at the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he was head of its Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology. During his time at the NCI, Dr. Gallo and his team were not only co-discoverers of HIV but pioneered the development of the HIV blood test. The AIDS virus blood screen now allows more rapid diagnosis of infection while simultaneously protecting patients receiving blood transfusions. In 1996, Dr. Gallo and his team his discovered that a natural compound known as chemokines can block the HIV virus and halt the progression of AIDS. Prior to the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Gallo and his team identified the human leukemia retrovirus HTLV, one of few known viruses shown to cause a human cancer. Dr. Gallo is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He holds 19 honorary doctorates and has been awarded the Albert Lasker Award in Medicine twice (1982 and 1986). Dr. Gallo was the most referenced scientist in the world in the 1980s and 1990s, and is the author of more than 1,100 scientific publications and the book Virus Hunting - AIDS, Cancer & the Human Retrovirus: A Story of Scientific Discovery. | 