Constance Benson, M.D., is a Professor of Medicine and Global Public Health, Senior Attending Physician, the Co-Director of the Antiviral Research Center, and the Principal Investigator for the HIV Collaborative Clinical Trials Unit within the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at University of California San Diego. Dr. Benson received her M.D. degree from The Ohio State University College of Medicine in 1978, completed her residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Rush University Medical College in Chicago in 1986, after serving three years on active duty in the U.S. Navy as an internist. She previously served on the faculty of Rush University Medical School, the University of Colorado at Denver School of Medicine, and currently in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health UCSD.
Dr. Benson is an internationally recognized clinical and translational researcher and clinician working in the fields of HIV, TB and recently SARS-CoV-2 since 1986. She led the NIH/NIAID AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Network from 2003-2010 and currently leads the UCSD HIV Collaborative Clinical Trials and co-leads the Antiviral Research Center both since 2005. She currently conducts and manages an extensive portfolio of clinical and translational research projects, grants, and contracts, involving multiple national and international multicenter clinical trials in the fields of HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV-related opportunistic infections, and treatment and complications of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Her current major areas of research interest include Mycobacterium tuberculosis, other non-tuberculous mycobacterial diseases, new antiretroviral drug development, and the treatment of emerging infectious diseases in resource-limited settings through her work with an NIH-sponsored University of Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) Health Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI/HEPI) and D43 training grants led by colleagues in Mozambique and at UCSD.