Mary Klotman
Mary E. Klotman earned a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology and an MD from Duke. She then stayed on at Duke to complete her Residency in Internal Medicine (1980-83) and Fellowship in Infectious Diseases (1983-85). She also served as Assistant Professor of Medicine at Duke before moving to the National Institutes of Health in 1991, where she trained and worked in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology under the direction of Dr. Robert C. Gallo, recognized internationally for his co-discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS.
In 1994, Dr. Klotman joined the faculty at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, where she was the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases for 13 years. She was also Co-Director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute, a program designed to translate basic science discoveries into clinical therapeutics for newly emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.
She returned to Duke in 2010 as Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the School of Medicine, thereby becoming the first female to chair a Duke clinical department. In 2015, she received a Duke University School of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2017, she was named Dean of the Duke School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs.
An accomplished clinician and scientist, Dr. Klotman’s research interests are focused on the molecular pathogenesis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1 (HIV-1) infection. Among the many important contributions to this field, she and her team demonstrated that HIV resides in and evolves separately in kidney cells, a critical step in HIV-associated kidney disease. Her research group has also determined the role of soluble host factors involved in an innate immune response to HIV in an effort to improve prevention strategies, and, most recently, to develop topical microbicides that could be used to block sexual transmission of HIV.
Dr. Klotman has been involved in a number of professional activites including:
- Past President of the Association of American Physicians
- Past President of the Association of Professors of Medicine
- Membership in the National Academy of Medicine
- Editor of Annual Review of Medicine
Interview
This oral history interview was conducted with Dr. Mary Klotman conducted on October 21, 2010 by Jessica Roseberry.