Dr. Julio Montaner

Executive Director and Physician-in-Chief, BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS; Head, HIV/AIDS Program, St. Paul’s Hospital, Providence Health Care;
UBC and St. Paul's Foundation Chair in AIDS Research and UBC-Killam Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia;

Julio Montaner, OC, OBC, MD, FRCPC, FCCP
Dr. Montaner received his MD with Honours in 1979 at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1981, he joined the University of British Columbia as a post-doctoral fellow, completed a residency in Internal Medicine and Respiratory Medicine and was Chief Resident for the Department of Medicine in 1986/1987.

In 1987 Dr. Montaner joined the Faculty at St. Paul's Hospital/University of British Columbia as the Director of the AIDS Research Program and the Infectious Disease Clinic. He held a National Health Research Scholar of Health Canada (NHRDP) for a period of 10 years starting in 1988. He is a founding co-Director of the Canadian HIV Trials Network. He has held the Endowed Chair on AIDS Research at SPH/UBC since 1996. In 1997, he was appointed Professor of Medicine at UBC. He is the Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. He was the President of the International AIDS Society from 2008-2010 and currently is the Local Co-Chair of the 8th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention which will be held in Vancouver July 19-22, 2015. Recently, he has been assigned the position of Global Advisor on HIV Therapeutics to the Executive Director of the United Nations AIDS Programme.

Dr. Montaner has authored over 800 scientific publications on HIV/AIDS. He has focused his research in the development of antiretroviral therapies and management strategies. In the mid 90’s, as the PI of the INCAS Trial, he played a key role in establishing the efficacy of NNRTI based highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), which emerged as the new global Standard of Care at the 1996 Vancouver International AIDS Conference, of which he was a co-organizer. He then focused his attention to HAART access to hard to reach populations, including injection drug users, and the treatment of multiple drug resistant HIV infection with great success. Since the late 90’s he also pioneered the concept of Treatment as Prevention (TasP). He was the first to advocate for the expansion of HAART coverage to curb the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in terms of decreasing progression to AIDS and death, as well as decreasing HIV transmission. Largely through his efforts, TasP has now been implemented with great success in BC, and progressively embraced by UNAIDS, China, PEPfAR, the US Government, and France, among others. In 2013 TasP was fully incorporated in the WHO Consolidated ARV Guidelines.

Dr. Montaner has received numerous awards and distinctions for his research work, among them the Knowledge Translation Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health (CIHR), Prix Galien Award, Albert Einstein World of Science Award, Hope is a Vaccine Award from the Global Alliance to Immunize against AIDS, and the David Barry DART Achievement Award that is given in recognition of invaluable contributions to the field of HIV drug discovery. He has received the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to Austria, The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for contributions to the field of HIV/AIDS, “Senador Domingo Faustino Sarmiento” from the Argentina Senate of the Nation presented to him by the Honorable Amado Boudou, Vice President of Argentina, and the Honorable Maria Laura Leguizamon, Senator of Buenos Aires, three Doctor of Science honoris causa degrees from Simon Fraser University, Cordoba University and the University of Buenos Aires, and an honorary fellow at Douglas College. He is a Member of the Order of British Columbia and an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has been inducted into the Royal Society of Canada-The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences (RSC) and into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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