Robert Gallo

Robert Charles Gallo
Robert Gallo in 1995
Born	(1937-03-23) March 23, 1937 (age 79) Waterbury, Connecticut, United States
Education	Providence College (B.S.; 1959) Thomas Jefferson University (MD; 1963)
Years active	1963–present
Known for	Co-discoverer of HIV
Medical career
Profession	Medical doctor
Institutions	National Cancer Institute
Specialism	Infectious disease and virology
Research	Biomedical research
Notable prizes	Lasker Award (1982, 1986) Charles S. Mott Prize (1984) Dickson Prize (1985) Japan Prize (1988)

Robert Charles Gallo (born March 23, 1937) is an American biomedical researcher. He is best known for his role in the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the infectious agent responsible for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and in the development of the HIV blood test, and he has been a major contributor to subsequent HIV research.

Gallo is the director and co-founder of the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, established in 1996 in a partnership including the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore. In November 2011, Gallo was named the first Homer & Martha Gudelsky Distinguished Professor in Medicine. Gallo is also a co-founder of biotechnology company Profectus BioSciences, Inc. and co-founder and scientific director of the Global Virus Network (GVN).

Gallo was born in Waterbury, Connecticut to a working-class family of Italian immigrants. He earned a BS degree in Biology in 1959 from Providence College and received an MD from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1963. After completing his medical residency at the University of Chicago, he became a researcher at the National Cancer Institute, where he worked for 30 years, mainly as head of the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology.

Gallo states that his choice of profession was influenced by the early death of his sister from leukemia, a disease to which he initially dedicated much of his research.