The Honor of a Lifetime Fighting HIV
Dr. Savita Pahwa received international recognition from HIV Congress 2025 as she steps down from the Miami CFAR.
When Miller School physician-scientist Savita Pahwa, M.D., stepped onto the stage on March 22 to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award at HIV Congress 2025 in Mumbai, India, it was a moment of personal triumph in her struggle against a deadly disease that, in four decades, has been transformed from a frightening medical mystery to a manageable chronic illness.
It was the second time that she was acknowledged in this way. In 2023, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the AIDS Society of India.
“This is an outstanding and well-deserved tribute and recognition for Dr. Pahwa’s remarkable achievements and contributions to science,” said Henri R. Ford, M.D., M.H.A., dean and chief academic officer of the Miller School. “We are so fortunate to have Dr. Pahwa on our faculty.”
Dr. Pahwa, professor of microbiology and immunology, with secondary appointments in the departments of pediatrics and medicine, is the founding director of the Miami Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), the first and still the only National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded AIDS research center in Florida and one of fewer than two dozen CFARs in the United States. The award was given at a turning point in a stellar academic medical career. After 18 years at the helm of the Miami CFAR, Dr. Pahwa is stepping down on May 31. She will be succeeded by Rana Chakraborty, M.D., chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and the Adrienne Arsht Endowed Chair in Pediatric Clinical Research, who joined the Miller School in June 2024.
An Independent Nature
Dr. Pahwa’s career began in an unconventional yet, somehow, predestined fashion.
“When I was growing up in New Delhi, it was not so common for a young, unmarried woman to make her own life plans,” she said. “The medical school I attended, Lady Hardinge Medical College, was the only women’s medical school in Asia.”
But Dr. Pahwa was a contrarian by nature. She boarded a flight to the United States alone to launch her medical career, further evidence of her determination to make decisions for herself.
Surprisingly, though, she did it all with the encouragement of her family. Her father, a cardiothoracic specialist, her mother, a school principal, and her brother, a software entrepreneur, all provided support. Her father influenced her the most.
“I had seen my father go to England for the prestigious M.R.C.P. degree,” Dr. Pahwa said. “I was a dreamer myself and imagined all kinds of opportunities that only America could provide — and that was true — and my father encouraged me. Growing up, I watched him poring over medical journals. He was very knowledgeable and very kind-hearted with his patients. I decided early on that I wanted to be a doctor just like him.”
Confronting a Medical Mystery
Dr. Pahwa’s career path developed through her love for immunology. It began in 1976 at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she trained under Dr. Robert A. Good in the investigation and treatment of patients with primary immune deficiency diseases. In 1982, she was recruited to North Shore University Hospital, which was affiliated with Cornell University, as chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Pediatrics. That year, a mysterious, fatal new lung infection started showing up at North Shore.
It was often referred to as a “gay plague,” but this new disease was not limited to gay men. It began appearing in children and newborns who also had clinical findings of immune deficiencies.
“Those children became my patients in the immunology clinic, because no one else wanted them and no one knew what was wrong with them,” Dr. Pahwa said. “Most children died. It was terrible to see. They were sweet, beautiful kids. In those early days I would just tell the families not to lose hope, for new treatments were sure to come from ongoing research.”
The acronym AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) was given to the disease in 1982. The virus causing it was identified in 1983 but not named HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) until 1986. As the disease continued to spread, it became evident that it could be acquired in a variety of ways, including sexual contact, shared needles, contaminated blood transfusions and from mothers to infants during pregnancy and delivery. Some of the earliest discoveries in perinatally acquired pediatric infections were made by medical researchers at the University of Miami, including Margaret Fischl, M.D., and Gwendolyn Scott, M.D.
The Creation of the Miami CFAR
Dr. Pahwa joined them in 2004. She was recruited by Eckhard Podack, M.D., Ph.D., then chair of the Miller School’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology, who wanted to establish a CFAR at the University of Miami. The efforts, under Dr. Pahwa’s leadership, succeeded in 2007. She gratefully acknowledges the contributions of her first leadership team, including Drs. Scott and Fischl and Lisa Metsch, Ph.D., as well as many others.
“We received the first NIH-funded center grant at UM,” she said. “That was the proudest moment of my career. Since then, the Miami CFAR has thrived and grown. Due to its performance, this grant — now in its fourth cycle — has been continually renewed. The Miami CFAR has increased the reputation of our university and helped us recruit high-level faculty.
“The HIV research community continues to develop improved treatments, which have become simpler and longer lasting, and UM is leading the field in some approaches to a cure,” Dr. Pahwa continued. “One is a strategy being conducted in non-human primates. And we have had great success spinning off studies that examine HIV comorbidities in women, Latinx and people of color, as well as people with substance use disorders.”
Our work will continue, and the succession of leadership is what makes the CFAR programs so vibrant. We need young leaders to keep moving it forward and take it in new directions. The key is that you can’t give up. You just have to keep at it.
Dr. Savita Pahwa
People with HIV are now living an almost-normal lifespan, but the battle is not over. The virus is very tricky and can establish a foothold in almost any area of the body. The diseases of aging occur earlier in people with HIV and are often compounded. But these challenges are being addressed. The Miami CFAR provides resources to investigators at all stages of their careers who are engaged in HIV-related research fields and also provides mentorship to early-stage investigators to become leaders of tomorrow.
“The most important goals for ending this epidemic are to prevent new infections and detect those that do occur in the early stages to start treatment, using treatment as prevention and same-day test-and-treat strategies,” Dr. Pahwa said. “Toward that end, we have made great progress with underserved, local communities through innovative strategies such as the UM mobile vans that distribute HIV testing kits and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication for people who do not have HIV to reduce or eliminate the risk of getting HIV from sex and from injection drug use.”
A Leadership Turning Point
Dr. Chakraborty praised Dr. Pahwa for her exemplary leadership while embracing the challenge of maintaining the Miller School’s nationally lauded work in HIV/AIDS research.
“I am proud to continue the work by leading the Miami CFAR to its next stage,” he said. “Though much work lies ahead in the upcoming years, I am delighted with our future prospects as we adapt and keep making scientific progress.”
Dr. Pahwa is stepping down as the Miami CFAR director, but she is not retiring. She has independent, NIH-funded research projects focusing on immunology and virology. She is a member of national and international research networks, including one aimed at finding a cure for children with HIV. She will continue as director of the Miami CFAR’s Laboratory Sciences Core.
“I feel immensely honored and humbled to have received the award in India and am indebted to all my teachers and mentors, colleagues and collaborators, staff and trainees for their input that has played a significant role in my career,” Dr. Pahwa said. “I am grateful to the NIH and the university leadership, including my department, for giving me the opportunity to serve as the Miami CFAR director and to pursue my independent research. Above all, I thank my parents, brother and two children for their support, and my husband, Dr. Raj Pahwa, who has helped me grow at every step and in the face of every challenge.
“Our work will continue, and the succession of leadership is what makes the CFAR programs so vibrant,” she concluded. “We need young leaders to keep moving it forward and take it in new directions. The key is that you can’t give up. You just have to keep at it.”
Tags: CFAR, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Dr. Rana Chakraborty, Dr. Savita Pahwa, HIV, HIV/AIDS, Infectious diseases, Miami Center for AIDS Research, microbiology and immunology