Dr. Guido Silvestri is currently a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Comparative Pathology (since 2010), as well as Professor and Chair in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine (since 2018). In addition, Dr. Silvestri has served from 2022 to 2024 as Executive Associate Dean for Research Strategy for the Emory University School of Medicine, and since 2024 serves as Vice President for Basic qand Translational Research of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center of Emory University, which handles >$1 billion in research funding spread over eight centers and schools.

Dr. Silvestri received his M.D. from the University of Ancona (Italy), and after finishing his service in the Italian Navy he completed training in Internal Medicine/ Allergy & Clinical Immunology in 1993. Soon after that, he moved to North America and became involved in basic and translational research studies of AIDS pathogenesis, prevention, and therapy, mostly using non-human primate models of HIV infection. In 2001, Dr. Silvestri received a Board Certification in Clinical Pathology upon completion of a residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2021 he received an honorary Ph.D. from the Grigori T. Popa University of Iasi (Romania).

Since 2001 Dr. Silvestri has directed an independent NIH-funded research program. He has served as principal investigator or co-investigator of many NIH grants, including a prestigious R37 MERIT award, and he is involved in both the Consortium for Innovative AIDS Research (CIAR) in non-human primates, the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI), and the Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication (CARE). He is currently co-director of the Emory-based Enterprise for Research and Advocacy to Stop and Eradicate HIV (ERASE HIV), which was awarded a 5-year $25M grant from the NIH in 2021.

Dr. Silvestri has authored or co-authored 305 peer-reviewed publications, including numerous in the highest impact journals (Nature, Cell, Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology, etc), as well as five scientific books. He has given invited lectures and seminars at >120 different institutions of 30 different countries. His work has been quoted >34,000 times (H-index 91), and has been presented in plenary sessions at all major AIDS, virology and immunology conferences worldwide. Dr. Silvestri is an Associate Editor of PLoS Pathogens, and past-Editor of the Journal of Virology (2013-2023) and the Journal of Immunology (2006-2015).

Dr. Silvestri served as Chairman or Standing Member in >50 study sections and advisory committees at the National Institutes of Health, the Canadian Institute for Health Research, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the Australian Medical Research Council, the European Commission, and various other institutions. Among his current and past appointments, Dr. Silvestri served as President of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Spallanzani-INMI (Rome, Italy), Co-Chair of the Scientific Council of the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche sur le SIDA, member of the Scientific Committee of the Conference on Retrovirus and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), and Co-Chaired the 9th International AIDS Conference in Paris, July 2017. He received, among numerous other awards, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award of Emory University, the Albert Levy Award for Scientific Excellence, and the Fiuggi Storia-Scienze award of the Levi-Pelloni Foundation and the Library of Shoah.