Joel M. Palefsky, MD, CM, FRCP(C)

Joel Palefsky, M.D., C.M., F.R.C.P.(C). Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. He is a graduate of McGill University School of Medicine, Montreal, Canada and trained there in Internal Medicine. His post-doctoral fellowship was at Stanford University where he trained in Infectious Diseases at Stanford University and molecular virology. He joined the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco in 1989, where he remains to the present time.

He is an internationally recognized expert on the molecular biology, treatment, pathogenesis and natural history of anogenital human papillomavirus infections, particularly in the setting of HIV infection. He is the director of the world's first clinic devoted to prevention of anal cancer, the Anal Neoplasia Clinic Research and Education Center at the UCSF Cancer Center. He is the vice-chair of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-supported AIDS Malignancy Consortium. He is the chair of the Anal Cancer /HSIL Outcomes Research (ANCHOR) Study, a national multi-site NIH study designed to determine whether treatment of anal cancer precursor lesions prevents the development of anal cancer and to identify biomarkers of progression. He is founder and past president of the International Anal Neoplasia Society and is past president of the International Papillomavirus Society. He is the founder and chairperson of the IPVS International HPV Awareness Day Campaign.