Michaela Müller-Trutwin is Professor at Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, where she heads the “HIV, Inflammation and Persistence” Unit. She studied Biology at the University in Bonn. She obtained her PhD from Paris-University. She worked at Research institutes in West- and Central-Africa. She has been the dean of the Pasteur-Paris University PhD program. Among other activities, she serves as the coordinator for HIV basic and translational research for the French Agency of Research on infectious emerging diseases (ANRS-MIE). Her team made key contributions on the geographic distribution of HIV variants and the origin of HIV, the role of inflammation in AIDS pathogenesis, the impact of early virus-host interactions on the outcome of HIV infection and the role of innate immunity in the regulation of viral persistence in tissues during HIV/SIV and SARS-CoV-2 infections by developing nonhuman primate models. Her work has been honored by several awards, such as from the French Medical Research Foundation.