General Info

Dr. Benson is Professor of Medicine in Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Benson received her MD degree from The Ohio State University College of Medicine in 1978, and 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 was recruited to the faculty of Rush University in the Division of Infectious Diseases in 1986, and remained there for 11 years, before being recruited to the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. She was subsequently recruited to UC San Diego in December 2005, joining the staff at UC San Diego Medical Center in January, 2006. Dr. Benson is an internationally-recognized researcher and clinician working in the field of HIV/AIDS since 1984. Her areas of research interest include Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium avium complex diseases, other HIV-related opportunistic infections, new antiretroviral drug development, treatment of acute HIV-1 infection, and the treatment of HIV infection and its complications in resource-limited international settings. She has served as the Vice Chair and then Principal Investigator and Chair of the NIH/NIAID AIDS Clinical Trials Group Network from 1995 to 2010, overseeing the expansion of that network to become the premier multicenter international HIV/AIDS therapeutic research network in the world. She currently serves as the Principal Investigator of the UC San Diego Department of Medicine HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Unit and the Director of the UC San Diego AntiViral Research Center (AVRC). Most recently her research has focused on the treatment and prevention of HIV-associated tuberculosis, the development of rapid, point-of-care diagnostic assays for resource-limited settings, and new antiretroviral drug development. Her contributions to the field of HIV/AIDS are numerous. To date, she has published more than 220 original manuscripts, invited reviews, and book chapters. Dr. Benson is also the Infectious Disease Training Program Director and maintains active clinical duties as a subspecialist in Infectious Diseases and HIV care at the UC San Diego Medical Center in San Diego.UC San Diego Health LinksFor more information, see http://health.ucsd.edu/specialties/Pages/id.aspx.For more information on UC San Diego's treatment of AIDS and HIV, see http://health.ucsd.edu/specialties/hiv/Pages/default.aspx.