Kelly MacDonald is the Professor and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the H.E Sellers Research Chair in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Manitoba. She came to Manitoba in 2015 after 20 years in Toronto where she was the Director of the HIV Research Program at the University of Toronto. She is a presently a practicing infectious disease specialist and clinician-scientist.

Her research focuses on pathogen-driven variation in host immune responses to HIV and its application in vaccine design. She supervises a research lab at the JC Wilt Infectious Diseases Centre as joint collaboration between the HIV program of the Canadian Public Health Agency and the University of Manitoba. She also conducts HIV vaccine and STD research in Nairobi, Kenya where she has worked for more than twenty-five years. She has two novel vaccine prototypes involving vaccine vectors from the herpes virus family (VZV and CMV) which aim at providing lifelong self-boosting immunity currently under study in nonhuman primates and humans as part of a CIHR Team in HIV vaccine design.
Dr. MacDonald received a Medical Degree from the University of Manitoba and trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is certified in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. She did post-doctoral research training at the Universities of Manitoba, Nairobi and Toronto. She was the inaugural holder of the University of Toronto- OHTN endowed chair in HIV research and was awarded the Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence award. Dr MacDonald has served nationally on the Federal Ministerial Council on HIV/AIDS, the CIHR HIV/AIDS Advisory Committee and as a member of the Basic Science Advisory Committee for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).