The CEO of CANSA takes pride in presenting the AG Oettle Memorial Medal to Professor Anna-Lise Williamson of the Division of Medical Virology.

Prof Williamson was born in Johannesburg and attended schools in Zambia and Zimbabwe. She completed her university studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1985. In 2004 she was promoted to Professor at UCT. In 2008 she was awarded Chair in Vaccinology (South African Research Chairs Initiative). Currently she holds the position of Project Director, Division of Medical Virology at the University of Cape Town.

Prof Williamson is an international recognized expert on human papillomavirus (HPV). Her strength is the ability to bring together multidisciplinary teams of people to do fruitful research as well as train post-graduate students.

Her initial work was on a novel retrovirus in sheep, but it is her ongoing research on the human papillomavirus - a leading cause of cervical cancer - and the human immunodeficiency virus that has defined her career thus far. As head of the HIV Vaccine Development Group at UCT, Williamson nursed the first African-developed candidate vaccines - both targeting HIV subtype C, the most common strain in Africa - to human trials in 2009. The group has an ongoing interest in studying HPV types associated with cervical and oral disease. The immune response to HPV is an ongoing interest with assays that have been developed to study mucosal immunity to HPV.

Prof Williamson published 150 journals, non-refereed articles and abstracts in internationally recognized journals. Her publications reflect productive collaborations with Department of Public Health (UCT), Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (UCT), pathologists, dentists, immunologists, veterinary researchers and internationally recognised scientists from the USA, Singapore and the UK. Recent collaborations include researchers from Japan and Sweden.

Most of her local and international collaborations have been on HPV. In 2006 her laboratory became a WHO regional HPV reference laboratory and is the only one in the "Africa" region. WHO is supporting the establishment of a global WHO HPV Laboratory Network whose mission is to "contribute to improving the quality of laboratory services for effective surveillance and monitoring of HPV vaccination impact through enhanced, state-of-the-art laboratory support".

Prof Williamson's work has proven enormously influential to researchers worldwide. CANSA honors this distinguished scientist for advancing cancer research and the understanding of our most devastating diseases.