Prof Quarraisha Abdool Karim FRS, Deputy Chair of the NITheCS Steering Committee, is one of over 90 outstanding researchers from around the world who have been elected this year to the Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS), the UK’s national academy of sciences.
She now joins the ranks of some of the most exceptional scientists in history who were also elected to the Fellowship. These include Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Lise Meitner, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Dorothy Hodgkin.
Prof Francesco Petruccione, Director of NITheCS, congratulated her on this remarkable achievement:
“We are immensely proud of Prof Abdool Karim’s election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. This achievement highlights the global esteem for South African scientific excellence. We are deeply honoured to have her guidance and leadership at NITheCS.”
Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, welcomed the newest Fellows, saying:
“Their achievements represent the very best of scientific endeavour, from basic discovery to research with real-world impact across health, technology and policy. From tackling global health challenges to reimagining what AI can do for humanity, their work is a testament to the power of curiosity-driven research and innovation.”
Prof Abdool Karim is an Associate Scientific Director at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at Columbia University. For more than three decades, she has played a leading role in shaping the global HIV prevention field, particularly in developing prevention technologies for adolescent girls and young women.
Her landmark research, the CAPRISA 004 trial, demonstrated that antiretrovirals could prevent the sexual transmission of HIV. This pivotal discovery laid the foundation for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).
She joins a handful of South African scientists and researchers who have received this prestigious honour. Others elected to the Fellowship are her husband, epidemiologist Prof Salim Abdool Karim; Wits Vice-Chancellor and physicist Prof Zeblon Vilakazi; tuberculosis researcher Prof Valerie Mizrahi; chemist Prof Tebello Nyokong; physicist Prof Bernie Fanaroff; theoretical physicist Prof George Ellis; Emeritus Professor of Biological Sciences William Bond and distinguished chemist and battery materials researcher Dr Michael Thackeray.
Prof Abdool Karim will be formally admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society at a ceremony in London in July 2025. Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is the world’s oldest scientific academy and is a fellowship of the world’s most eminent scientists.