Prof. Cristian Apetrei is a Professor within the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, and Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, USA. He obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. from the "Gr. T. Popa" School of Medicine, Iasi, Romania in 1990 and 1993, respectively, where he completed residency training in 1994. Then, he served as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ANRS "Bichat-Claude Bernard" Hospital, University Paris Diderot, Paris, France in 1998. Dr. Apetrei’s research focuses on simian immunodeficiency virus diversity and pathogenesis in natural hosts and upon cross-species transmission. He pioneered SIV pathogenesis studies in the wild (in African green monkeys and mandrills) and has been actively involved during the last decade in modeling different aspects of HIV pathogenesis in non-human primate hosts. In addition, he is a Member of the CSS11 (Agence Francaise pour la Recherche sur le SIDA), the American Society for Immunology, and the American Association of Immunology.