Dr. Connick has been chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and a Professor with tenure since April 2016. A 1988 Harvard Medical School graduate, Dr. Connick completed an internship and internal medicine residency at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York and an infectious disease fellowship at the University of Colorado. She joined the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado in 1974 and pursued a career as a physician scientist, rising to the level of Professor. She was Director of the Immunology Core of the Center for AIDS Research at University of Colorado (2004-2010), medical director at the UC Boulder Clinical and Translational Research Center (2005-2016), and chair of the Radiopharmaceutical Oversight Committee, the Radioactive Drug Research Committee, and the Human Use Committee on Ionizing Radiation at UC Denver (2004-2016). She held joint appointments as an adjunct professor in the UC Department of Integrative Physiology and the UC Department of Immunology and Microbiology.
Since joining the University of Arizona, Dr. Connick has served as the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program Director since 2018. She has secondary appointments in Bio5 as well as the Department of Immunobiology. On a national level, Dr. Connick has had multiple roles. She served as a member on the FDA’s Antiviral Drug Advisory Committee (2011-14), the Office of AIDS Research Advisory council (2015-2019), and the NIH AIDS Immunology and Pathogenesis Study Section (2014-2018), including as Chair for the last two years. She has held multiple leadership roles within the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), a large HIV clinical trials organizations that plays a significant role in establishing standards of care for HIV infection and opportunistic diseases related to HIV and AIDS in the United States and developing world. Dr. Connick currently serves as a member of the ACTG’s Scientific Advisory Steering Committee as well as Chair of the ACTG’s Women’s Health Collaborative Science Group since 2017.
Dr. Connick received the ACTG’s Constance B. Wofsy Woman’s Health Award in 2020 in recognition of her scientific contributions to research in women living with HIV. She is an Associate Editor for Clinical Infectious Diseases, and serves on the editorial boards of Infectious Disease News, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Journal of the International AIDS Society.
Dr. Connick has devoted her research career to laboratory-based studies as well as clinical trials aimed at improving the care of people living with HIV. Her research interests include understanding the immunopathogenesis of HIV-1 infection including HIV cure strategies as well as mechanisms underlying sex differences in HIV infection. She has also pursued work in cardiovascular disease in HIV infection including strategies to improve smoking cessation. Her research has been funded for more than 20 years primarily by NIH grants, as well as in some instances pharmaceutical companies. With the advent of the COVID 19 pandemic, she has become involved in studies of the efficacy of mRNA vaccines in preventing asymptomatic COVID 19 infection and transmission.