Keynote Speaker | Carlos del Rio, MD
Dr. Carlos del Rio is the Leon L. Haley, Jr. MD Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and Interim Dean of Emory University School of Medicine. He is also Professor of Global Health and Professor of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health. Dr. del Rio is co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research and co-principal investigator of the Emory-CDC HIV Clinical Trials Unit and the Emory Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit.
Dr. del Rio is a native of Mexico where he attended medical school at Universidad La Salle, graduating with honors in 1983. He did his internal medicine and infectious diseases residencies at Emory University. In 1989 he returned to Mexico where he was executive director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico (CONASIDA, the federal agency of the Mexican government responsible for AIDS policy throughout Mexico) from 1992 through 1996. In November of 1996, Dr. del Rio returned to Emory where he is involved in patient care, teaching, and research.
Student Speaker | Andrea Abi-Karam
Andrea Abi-Karam is a trans Arab-American poet, workshop facilitator, activist, and future socially-conscious physician. They are the author of two books, EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019) and Villainy (Nightboat Books, 2021), both finalists for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. With Kay Gabriel, they co-edited the landmark collection of formally inventive writing by 72 intergenerational trans poets, We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). They were a part of the 2022 inaugural cohort of Weill Cornell’s Surgical Pipeline Program and served as the 2022-2023 Vice President of Medical Specialties on the PPSC. Andrea is a Health Educator at Columbia’s Project STAY and a peer tutor at the GS Academic Resource Center. They are passionate about queer and trans healthcare, sexual health, global public health, and surgery.
