As you may have heard by now, the Kirby Institute is mourning the loss of our Director, Scientia Professor David Cooper AO.
David passed away after a short illness at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney on Sunday 18 March 2018, aged 68.
David was an eminent immunologist who devoted himself to HIV medicine. For over 30 years, David was at the forefront of HIV research and treatment in Australia and globally. He was working at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, when the HIV epidemic reached Australia in the 1980s, moving him and his colleagues to initiate one of Australia’s first clinical HIV research studies. The results, published in The Lancet, described for the first time anywhere in the world the “seroconversion illness” that often accompanies the initial stage of HIV infection. From here, David dedicated his life to understanding the virus through initiating ground-breaking, collaborative research, and contributed to the development of almost every therapeutic drug used in HIV to date.
He was the founding Director of the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research in 1986, now the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales, and as Director for the entirety of the Institute’s history, expanded our research scope over the years to include hepatitis, sexually transmissible infections, and other infectious diseases.
Not only was he a leading scientist in medicine and academia, David was also a highly respected and trusted clinician. He provided compassionate and dignified treatment, care, and counsel to his many patients right up until his passing. Among tributes that have flooded in over the past week, there are many from his patients, who considered David a friend and emphasised his empathy as being a source of comfort throughout the time they or their loved one were under David’s care.
We have been overwhelmed, and are extremely grateful, for the many messages about David that we have received to date, and we are continuing to collect stories and messages on behalf of David’s wife Dorrie, daughters Becky and Ilana, and their whole family. Please send them to Luci Bamford –
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.
A public memorial will be held in the coming months. We will be announcing the details in due course.
Vale David Cooper.