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• May 1 - I presented a plenary talk at the Virology Congress at The Pasteur Institute in Tehran.  I also met with Pasteur scientists and students and drafted preliminary plans for the establishment of a HIV/AIDS laboratory and didactic training program with the Institute with direct involvement with the Center for Disease Control (Iran).

• May 2 - Met with Dr. Setayesh, country officer of UNAIDS. We spoke for about two hours and then attended a 3 hr meeting where prioritization of HIV/AIDS activities in Iran was discussed. Participants included UN and WHO members as well as Iranian public health representatives.  After the meeting I met with the director again and we laid the foundations for getting UNAIDS and WHO involved in the HIV/AIDS training programs I will conduct in Iran.

• May 5 – Through a student I have been advising for couple of years, I met Dr. Masoumeh Ebtekar, head of Oncology at Tarbiat-e-Moddares University in Tehran.  Dr. Ebtekar was an assistant to President Khatami during his tenure as President of Iran; the first woman in Iran to be an assistant to a president.  We discussed opportunities that exist for Iranian clinical cancer centers with respect to the use of primary patient tumor samples.

• May 6 – I was contacted by Dr. Abedi, Head of Hormozgan University for Medical Sciences to give a talk in the city of BandarAbbass by the Persian Gulf.  We had a meeting and discussed Malaria, TB (which are prevalent) and the alarming increase in HIV/AIDS in the region.  I gave a seminar and then had a lengthy closed door meeting with Dr. Abedi and several of his colleagues where we discussed new methodology that should be implemented in order to decrease stigma and increase detection in Iran. 

• May 7 - I met with representatives from ParsRuss, a Tehran biotechnology company that has developed potential HIV/AIDS therapeutics.   We discussed the possibility of collaborations.  Specifically, I will provide them with some technical expertise to test their putative drug substance in vitro.

• May 8 - My final meeting (before a few days with my family) was with the head of the CDC in Iran, Dr. Gouya, and two of his colleagues.  We discussed ways in which to standardize HIV/AIDS techniques in Iran and the Middle East.  Dr. Gouya is eager to send a few select students to the US (Harvard?) to be trained in Molecular Epidemiology, a field that is virtually non-existent in Iran.