Jackson Free Press

JACKSON – TIME named HIV specialist Dr. Hannah Gay, UMMC associate professor of pediatrics, to the 2013 TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In caring for a newborn infected with HIV in 2010, Gay followed an atypical treatment regimen and functionally cured the baby. She and her colleagues, Dr. Deborah Persaud, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center virologist, and University of Massachusetts Medical School immunologist Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, who were also named to the TIME 100 list, presented the child’s case report in March at a scientific meeting in Atlanta. The report is the world’s first to describe an HIV functional cure in an infant.

Gay said she is honored and wants the recognition to highlight the efforts of physicians and scientists worldwide working in HIV prevention, care and research.

“This case represents decades of work by thousands of researchers and health-care providers to bring the HIV epidemic under control,” Gay said.

TIME’s full list and related tributes appear in the April 29 issue, available on newsstands and tablets on Friday, April 19, and now at www.time.com/time100.

Gay and her colleagues’ entry on the list can be found here.

The list, now in its 10th year, recognizes the activism, innovation and achievement of the world’s most influential individuals. As TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel has said of the list in the past, “The TIME 100 is not a list of the most powerful people in the world, it’s not a list of the smartest people in the world, it’s a list of the most influential people in the world. They’re scientists, they’re thinkers, they’re philosophers, they’re leaders, they’re icons, they’re artists, they’re visionaries. People who are using their ideas, their visions, their actions to transform the world and have an effect on a multitude of people.”