Leadership Team
Davey Smith, M.D., M.A.S.
Dr. Davey Smith is the lead investigator for the Last Gift study. He is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and is currently the Director of the Altman Clinical Translational Research Institute at UCSD. In addition, Dr. Smith serves as the co-director of UCSD’s Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).
Sara Gianella Weibel, M.D.
Dr. Sara Gianella Weibel is a Professor of Medicine at UCSD, specializing in HIV and translational virology. She has held positions of leadership within the UCSD CFAR as director of the Translational Virology Core as well as the HIV Neurobehavioral Research Center (HNRC) as the Co-Director of the NeuroVirology and Biology Core.
For the Last Gift Study, Dr. Gianella oversees all procedures related to recruitment, outreach, participant enrollment, and follow-up. She is involved in the development of the rapid research autopsy procedures and the creation of lab-based techniques to process blood and tissues in an effort to characterize HIV reservoirs.
Robert Deiss, M.D.
Robert Deiss is an Associate Physician at the Owen Clinic at UC San Diego and serves as the Leadership Trainee for the SD CFAR International and Clinical Investigation Cores. He is a board-certified infectious disease specialist who specializes in treating people living with HIV. Prior to joining the Owen Clinic, Dr. Deiss was a research and staff physician at the Naval Medical Center San Diego, where he led studies on neurocognitive impairment and cardiovascular disease among people living with HIV.
More recently, he spent a year in Mozambique through Doctors Without Borders, primarily treating patients with advanced HIV and related diseases, including tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis, and Kaposi’s sarcoma. His current research interests include the intersection of HIV and substance abuse and sexual risk behavior.
Patricia (Katie) Riggs, DO
Dr. Riggs is a board-certified internal medicine physician and Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSD. Dr. Riggs is pursuing a clinical focus on patients with HIV and research focused on the neuropsychiatric effects of viral infections and associated immune dysregulation. For the Last Gift study, she conducts participant visits, data collection, and analysis. She is thankful to have the opportunity to participate in this very important study and honored to work with our amazing participants.
Elizabeth Hastie, M.D.
Elizabeth (Lizzy) Hastie is in her third year of her Infectious Diseases Fellowship at UCSD and in her second year of research training as a member of the Last Gift Team. While she has only been a part of the team for 1 year, she has already gained valuable experience at the bench and is making strides towards applying for an NIH Research Career Development (K) award focused on improving HIV care in transgender individuals.
Jingjing Hu, M.D.
Jingjing Hu is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Pathology. She is sub-specialized in head/neck pathology, gastrointestinal pathology, and cytopathology. She has a strong research interest in head/neck cancers and HIV area. She has an extensive background in autopsy and has worked closely with the Last Gift team to optimize the autopsy procedures.
Karine Dubé, DrPH, MPhil
Karine Dubé is an Associate Professor at the UCSD School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health. She oversees the ethics and socio-behavioral sciences aspects of the Last Gift study. Dr. Dube develops essential surveys and questionnaires for participants, and works actively to answer important ethical questions not only for the Last Gift study, but also for the HIV community as a whole.
Antoine Chaillon, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Antoine Chaillon is an Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSD’s Department of Medicine with specialized training in bioinformatics. He is an infectious disease physician by training with a strong background in bioinformatics, molecular virology, and next-generation sequencing data analyses. He is co-director of the San Diego CFAR Translational Virology Core (Director Dr. Gianella) and leader of the Computational Biology Unit.
He has extensive experience in sequence analysis, phylogenetics, and viral evolution, and he was successful in applying these techniques to characterize HIV persistence, dynamics, and dispersal within and across individuals with a particular focus on persistence in the central nervous system (CNS). Using these methods, he has published extensively on this topic.
Dr. Chaillon also works closely with Dr. Davey M. Smith at UCSD to develop and utilize the latest techniques to maximize the accuracy of deep sequencing data analyses. He is also a co-investigator of the Last Gift cohort.
Stephanie Solso, RN, MSN
Stephanie Solso is a Clinical Research Nurse at the UCSD Antiviral Research center. She previously worked in pediatrics and the NICU but switched to HIV research in 2019. She is the main nurse for the Last Gift project, recruiting and enrolling participants and coordinating study visits.
Cheryl Dullano, B.S., M.B.A.
Cheryl Dullano is a Clinical Research Coordinator at UCSD’s AntiViral Research Center. She brings years of experience in recruiting research study participants, as well as collecting data for HIV-related clinical trials. Cheryl is a key member of the Last Gift team and is committed to the mission of the study and the legacy its participants will undoubtedly leave on the world.
Lab Technicians & Tissue Processing Team
From left to right: Magali Porrachia, Brendon Woodworth, Caroline (Karole) Ignacio
The laboratory team ensures the rapid autopsy procedure runs smoothly. Trained heavily in lab techniques, they are responsible for maintaining the integrity of biological samples. They have worked together for years – allowing for a cohesive team dynamic.
Community Representatives
Jeff Taylor
A 35+ year HIV & AIDS survivor, Jeff has served as a community advisor to many research groups including the UCSD AntiViral Research Center Community Advisory Board and the Community Scientific Subcommittee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group. He also serves on the AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition’s Drug Development Committee, which meets regularly with pharmaceutical companies and the FDA on HIV drug development issues.
Locally, Jeff produces a monthly education series on treatment issues for HIV patients & providers and is director of the HIV + Aging Research Project-Palm Springs, which studies aging with HIV.
Andy Kaytes
Andy has been involved in HIV treatment and research advocacy since the mid-1990s. He co-chairs the UCSD AntiViral Research Center CAB, and actively serves on numerous advisory boards, and is a member of the Community Scientific Subcommittee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group. He is on the Board of Directors and the Drug Development Committee of the AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition meeting regularly with pharmaceutical companies and the FDA on HIV drug development issues. Much of Andy’s focus is on HIV Cure/Remission, Neurological effects of HIV, long-acting antiviral medications, and novel drug delivery devices. He also facilitates a long-running weekly support group providing treatment education and social support. Fun fact: Andy is the designer of the Last Gift logo, which symbolizes how each study participant is a piece of a larger puzzle to end the HIV epidemic.