David Albert Cooper AO FAA (born 1949) is an Australian HIV/AIDS researcher, immunologist, professor at the University of New South Wales, and the director of the Kirby Institute. He diagnosed the first case of HIV in Australia.
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Career
Cooper received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney in 1969 and an MBBS from Sydney Medical School in 1972. After completing his residency at St Vincent's Hospital, he was awarded a postgraduate research scholarship by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to study immunology. In 1975 he went to Tucson, Arizona, where he was a research fellow at the University of Arizona Medical Center. He then returned to St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney and was promoted to an immunology staff specialist in 1979.
Cooper travelled to Boston, Massachusetts, as a research fellow in cancer immunology in 1981—the beginning of the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the United States. Having seen the symptoms of HIV/AIDS in young gay men in the U.S., Cooper returned to Australia and resumed his role at St Vincent's Hospital, where he recognised the same illness in young Australian men who had recently travelled to the U.S. He is credited with diagnosing the first case of HIV in Australia after publishing a case report on a man with HIV seroconversion illness in The Lancet in 1985. He was awarded a Doctor of Medicine by UNSW in 1983 and appointed a senior lecturer at the university in 1986. In the same year he was named director of the newly founded National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (now the Kirby Institute).
In 1991 he was named chair of the WHO Global Program in AIDS committee on clinical research and drug development, and in 1994 he was appointed a full professor and awarded a Doctor of Science by UNSW. In 1996 he and two other HIV/AIDS researchers, the Dutch Joep Lange and Thai Praphan Phanuphak, founded a research centre in Bangkok named HIVNAT (HIV Netherlands Australia Thailand Research Collaboration). Cooper, Lange and Phanuphak also established a program to increase access to antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV in Cambodia.
Cooper has directed the Kirby Institute since its establishment in 1986. He is also a past president of the International AIDS Society.
Honours
Cooper was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2003 for his contribution to medicine and HIV/AIDS research. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2007 and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2015.