.jpg "Karin Nielsen-Saines, MD, MPH photo")
Professor of Pediatrics
David Geffen UCLA School of Medicine
Los Angeles, CA, United States
Dr. Karin Nielsen-Saines is Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital and a member of the UCLA faculty since 1996. She is also an attending physician for Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center and co-director of the Care4Families HIV clinic at UCLA. Dr. Nielsen was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro where she obtained medical training from the University of Rio de Janeiro and completed a pediatric residency at the Hospital dos Servidores do Estado. She then came to Los Angeles where she completed a clinical and research fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UCLA and obtained a Master’s degree in Public Health/ Epidemiology at the same institution. Dr. Nielsen’s main area of research has been in the area of HIV, congenital infections, TB; she is also very interested in tropical and neglected infectious diseases. Dr. Nielsen has led innumerous collaborative research studies in Brazil and in the U.S, as well as other countries in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Her work has focused on prevention of HIV transmission from mother to child and between couples, as well as treatment of this disease and other infections in children, adolescents and adults. Much of this work has been completed through large multicenter prospective clinical trials. Dr. Nielsen has very strong longstanding research collaborations in Brazil and received the Diaspora Award in Medical Sciences from the Government of Brazil in recognition of her contributions. During the Zika epidemic of 2015-16 she joined efforts with leading experts from the Arboviral Diseases Division at the Fundaçao Oswaldo Cruz and the Fiocruz Maternal-Pediatric Hospital, Instituto Fernandes Figueira both in Rio de Janeiro to investigate the pathogenesis of ZIKA virus transmission during pregnancy and characterize the repercussions of antenatal Zika exposure in children. In the U.S., Dr. Nielsen led a large study of early treatment of HIV infection in youth in Los Angeles and New Orleans. During the COVID-19 pandemic she initiated a study of COVID-19 in pregnancy following children exposed to maternal infection during pregnancy in Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Much of her work has been funded by the NIH through the NIAID, NICHD, and the Fogarty Institute, as well as the NIH networks, IMPAACT, ATN, HPTN and ACTG and private foundations such as the Simons and Keck Foundations. Dr. Nielsen has mentored an extensive number of medical students, residents, fellows, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from all over the globe. She is an active clinician licensed in both the U.S. and in Brazil.
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
10:55 AM – 12:10 PM US PT