Researcher biography

Charles Gilks is an International Public Health specialist and Clinical Academic.

He is Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland (UQ), ranked 18th in the world (Shanghai 2018 global rankings). He has worked on Global Public Health, HIV/AIDS and other BBVs, Sexual Health and Health Systems strengthening, as a clinical researcher, providing technical assistance and in planning and policy development. His clinical research started with describing a new disease, HIV/AIDS, in Africa in a series of pivotal cross-sectional and cohort studies. He then led a series of multicentre clinical trials of HIV-related disease prevention and ART (Antiretroviral therapy).

He was Professor of Tropical Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine then moved to the World Health Organisation. He was in WHO from 2001-2010, as Director of HIV Prevention, Care and Treatment scale-up. He led ART scale-up (including "3by5"); he pioneered the Public Health approach to HIV, and edited all the Prevention and Treatment guidelines that set the global norms and standards for HIV programming; his team also developed the concept of Treatment as Prevention. In 2014, he was appointed as the first Queensland Professorial Chair in HIV and STI. He has published over 240 peer-reviewed papers and his Google H-index is 66.

With a 30-year background in lecturing, presenting and more recently interacting with the media, he has learnt to communicate simply, clearly and concisely.