Professor Gary Maartens is both head of clinical pharmacology at the University of Cape Town and a chief specialist physician at Groote Schuur Hospital.

As a young specialist doctor, he worked in Cape Town during the early ’90s, witnessing first-hand the HIV epidemic in South Africa and realised much research needed to be done. Today Maartens is an international authority on the therapeutic aspects of HIV-associated TB, drug-resistant TB and antiretroviral therapy in resource-limited settings. 

He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, was the founding president for the South African College of Clinical Pharmacologists, and in 2015, was awarded a gold medal by the Medical Research Council of South Africa for outstanding contributions to medical research.