While studying infectious diseases as a fellow at Harvard Medical School in the early 80's, Dr. Kenneth Mayer saw some of the first AIDS patients in New England, and became immediately curious about the mechanism for HIV transmission. This interest has led to almost three decades of work, trying to understand the dynamics of HIV transmission, trying to develop new technologies to prevent the spread of the virus both in the US and internationally.

Early collaborations studied transmission dynamics in HIV discordant couples in order to try to understand the behavioral and biological reasons why some individuals became infected quickly with HIV and some others seemed to be more resistant to infection. In collaboration with Dr. Charles Carpenter and other colleagues at The Miriam Hospital, he was an Investigator in the HERS cohort, which studied the natural history of HIV in women. From the start of the epidemic, The Miriam Hospital Immunology Center has focused on the care of HIV-infected women. The Miriam team was then selected as a site to conduct some of the first topical microbicide studies to evaluate different types of gels to see if they were safe and well tolerated by at-risk and HIV-infected women. Some of the studies that were conducted in Providence led to large multi-center studies that were conducted subsequently in Africa and Asia. Although some of the first generation microbicides were not found to be effective, leading to an increased interest in the use of antiretrovirals, either taken orally or used topically, to prevent HIV transmission.

Brown University was one of three sites that conducted the first human studies of the evaluation of topical Tenofovir gel as an anti-HIV microbicide. Over the time that Dr. Mayer has worked at Brown, he has also continued to conduct studies evaluating HIV prevention interventions in high-risk men who have sex with men at Fenway Health in Boston, the largest community health center in New England focusing on sexual and gender minority populations. At Fenway, he is overseeing the conduct of two studies of oral antiviral chemoprophylaxis, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, in which at-risk individuals are monitored as to whether the use of antiretroviral therapy can protect them against becoming HIV infected. He has also cooperated with behavioral scientists to test a variety of anti-HIV behavioral interventions, both in Boston and Providence.

In collaboration with Dr. Carpenter and other colleagues in the Immunology Center, Dr. Mayer became interested in the global HIV pandemic more than 15 years ago, and assumed authority for an NIH Fogarty International Center AIDS International Training and Research Program grant, which by now has trained almost 100 clinical, laboratory, behavioral science, and public health investigators from India, Cambodia, The Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and western Kenya. These trainees have gone back to their home countries and have become leaders in clinical research, as well as the public health response to AIDS, and have remained active collaborators with several key Lifespan faculty, including Drs. Susan Cu-Uvin, Timothy Flanigan, Jane Carter, Rami Kantor, and Herb Harwell.

The strong support of the Dean of Medicine, Dr. Wing; the Chief of the Infections Disease, Dr. Flanigan; and the principal investigator of the Lifespan/Tufts/Brown Center for AIDS Research, Dr. Carpenter; have enabled Dr. Mayer and colleagues to develop some strong research initiatives with many local and international collaborators.