Constance A. Benson MD

Constance A. Benson, M.D. is a Professor of Medicine and Senior Attending Physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at University of California, San Diego. She is the Infectious Diseases Training Program Director; the Director of the UCSD Antiviral Research Unit (AVRC) and; the Principal Investigator (PI) and Director of the HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU). Dr. Benson received her M.D. degree from The Ohio State University College of Medicine in 1978, 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; to the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver in 1997, and to the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCSD in 2005.

Dr. Benson is an internationally-recognized researcher and clinician working in the field of HIV/AIDS since 1984. From 2003 to 2010, Dr. Benson served as the PI/Chair of the NIH/NIAID AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Network, and chaired the ACTG Executive Committee. From 1995 to 2003 she served as the Vice Chair of the ACTG Network and the Chair of the ACTG Scientific Agenda Steering Committee. The ACTG Network is a multinational, multicenter, therapeutic clinical investigation network with research sites in 15 countries originally established in 1986. During her 15 years in the leadership of the network, and under her scientific and administrative direction, the ACTG expanded its HIV/AIDS therapeutic research activities to include not only US sites but also to develop and establish 22 international clinical research sites in countries most affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, including sites in South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Botswana, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Haiti, Brazil, Peru, India, and Thailand to conduct scientifically rigorous randomized clinical trials and laboratory research in the field if HIV therapeutic interventions.