Nina Russell

Dr. Nina Russell oversees the foundation’s investments in vaccine and drug research and development to prevent and treat tuberculosis (TB) and HIV. These include vaccines, long-acting drugs, and biologics for HIV prevention, as well as TB vaccine and drug products that the foundation is advancing in close collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute and other partners. Nina also works in collaboration with the foundation diagnostics team to develop point-of-care TB diagnostics.

Nina has been involved with translational HIV vaccine research for over 20 years and, after joining the foundation in 2005, co-created the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery, a foundation funding model that established a highly collaborative community of leading HIV scientists with a diverse portfolio of early- to late-stage active and passive immunization projects. This model has since been used to create the Collaboration for TB Vaccine Discovery, a foundation-supported international network of scientists and experts focused on TB vaccine discovery and translational research.

Previously, Nina worked at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where she managed a pipeline of Phase I and Phase II HIV vaccine clinical trials for the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, working in close collaboration with academic, biotech, and industry partners to advance novel vaccine candidates into clinical testing.

Nina serves on the Vaccine Research Center Scientific Advisory Working Group at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the NIH’s AIDS Vaccine Research Subcommittee. She completed a residency in internal medicine at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and a clinical and research fellowship in infectious diseases at the Montefiore Medical Center – Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Nina received her M.D. from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and a B.A. from Yale University.