Dr Reena Rajasuriar is a Clinical Pharmacist by training and an Associate Professor at the Department of Medicine, University Malaya (UM).  She also holds an adjunct position as a Fellow at the Department of Infectious Diseases, University of Melbourne, Australia.  She leads the research unit at the Department of Medicine, UM and is Head of the Immunotherapeutics Laboratory (ITL), a core immunology research laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine, UM. 

Dr Rajasuriar completed her PhD in Immunogenetics at Monash University, Australia and now leads a translational research program in HIV and Aging at the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS (CERiA).  Her training as a clinical and basic scientist has afforded Dr Rajasuriar the expertise to perform multidisciplinary research spanning basic, clinical and implementation studies.  Her research focuses on understanding drivers of accelerated aging in people living with HIV and its interaction with functional aging outcomes.  She is also invested in understanding how integrated HIV care can best be implemented in resource limited settings to promote healthy aging.

Dr Rajasuriar has published extensively on the intersection of HIV and aging, and is an international leader in advancing the knowledge in this field, having delivered multiple plenaries at international forums, co-authored multiple opinion pieces and viewpoints as well as contributed to the development of consensus statements around this subject matter.  Together with members of her team, she was instrumental in developing the first ECHO training program on HIV and Aging for the Asia Pacific region to advance capacity building for health professionals providing care for people with HIV.  She is also the Principal Investigator of the only HIV and aging cohort in the Asia Pacific region studying aging from a multidimensional perspective, with over a decade of follow up (2014-2024).

Dr Rajasuriar’s work is funded by various national and international funding bodies including the National Institutes of Health, US, the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia.  She has received multiple accolades including the Australia-APEC Women in Research Fellowship (2015), the Loreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Malaysia Fellowship (2016), the IAS Research-for-Cure Academy Fellowship (2018), the CIRA International Visiting Fellowship to Yale (2019), the Asian Universities Alliance (AUA) Scholars Award (2023) and most recently, the Fulbright Malaysian Scholar Award (2024).