Douglas Richman

Douglas D. Richman (born 15 February 1943, New York, NY) is an American medical virologist. Richman has worked primarily in the HIV field over the past twenty years, with major contributions in the areas of resistance and pathogenicity.

Richman received his MD degree from Stanford University in 1970. After holding positions at the U.S. Public Health Service, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Harvard Medical School, he joined the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1976, becoming Professor of Pathology and Medicine (1988) as well as Co-Director (1994) and later Director (2000) of the Center for AIDS Research. As of 2007, he additionally holds the Florence Seeley Riford Chair in AIDS Research there.

He has also held positions at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health System since 1976, including Director from 1988 to 2007. As of 2007, he holds the position of staff physician.

Richman's early research was on influenza virus, herpesviruses and hemorrhagic fever viruses, before focusing on HIV in the 1980s. His wide-ranging research in the HIV field has encompassed resistance, viral pathogenicity and host immune responses. He was one of the group of researchers who first demonstrated HIV drug resistance in 1989, and in 1997, his laboratory was also among the first to demonstrate HIV latency.

As of 2007, his HIV/AIDS research focuses on the natural history and molecular pathogenesis of acute HIV infection, particularly the immune responses to the virus, and viral evolution to evade the immune system.

Awards include the Howard M. Temin Award (1993), Steve Chase Humanitarian Award for Science and Medicine of the Desert AIDS Project (2001) and United States Department of Veterans Affairs Middleton Award (2002).

Richman is one of the founding editors of the academic journal Antiviral Therapy and is Editor-in-Chief of Topics in HIV Medicine, as well as having served on the editorial board of 15 journals. He is a co-editor of the textbook Clinical Virology and editor of Antiviral Drug Resistance. He serves on the Vaccine Research Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group and the International AIDS Society panel responsible for publishing international treatment guidelines.