Liz Corbett

Corbett joined the faculty at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 2000 and moved to Harare, Zimbabwe in 2001.^[4][5] She joined the LSHTM as a Wellcome Trust Fellow^[6] and established the country's first tuberculosis laboratory.^[4] Corbett decided to start in Zimbabwe as the country has quality medical education and good public health infrastructure, and Corbett recruited scientists and technicians from the local community.^[4] In 2005 she was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship which allowed her to evaluate tuberculosis screening protocols.^[4] Corbett worked with the World Health Organization HIV Department in Geneva to investigate the access that healthcare workers in African countries have to HIV testing and care.^[4] At the time HIV self-testing was not very accessible, but was the primary form of diagnosis for healthcare workers. Corbett worked with the World Health Organization to support self-testing for healthcare workers. The success of this project meant that Corbett moved to Malawi.^[4]

Since 2009 Corbett has worked as an Epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and part of the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust program based in Blantyre.^[7][8] She was promoted to Professor in 2012 and led the world's first large evaluation of HIV self-testing.^[4] She has since lobbied Unitaid and Population Services International to provide self-testing in six African countries, raising over $72 million to support research and community-level implementation.^[4] The HIV self-testing kits have since been taken up by 59 countries, and over 6 million were used in 2018.^[4] Alongside HIVself-testing, Corbett is interested in tuberculosis management in HIV prevalent populations.^[9] She has investigated whether sputum microscopy or X-ray based diagnostics could be used to diagnose cases of tuberculosis in communities impacted by high rates of tuberculosis and HIV, as well as whether HIV self-testing should be offered to people who have tuberculosis-like symptoms.^[10] She has investigated the epidemic of long-term survivors of perinatal HIV transmission.^[11] Alongside her scientific research, Corbett has designed research training and taught students at the Malawi College of Medicine.^[4]

In 2018 Corbett was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.^[12] She delivered the 2018 Stephen Lawn Memorial Lecture.^[13] Corbett has served on various advisory boards within the World Health Organization, including membership of the Strategic & Technical Advisory Group.^[14] Other awards and honours include;

• 1995 Dr Ethel Williams Prize for Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge^[11]
• 2001 Woodruff Medal from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine^[11]
• 2003 Annual Scientific Prize of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease^[15]
• 2004 Awarded the Chalmers Medal by the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene^[1]
• 2007 Clinical Excellence Award from the Wellcome Trust^[11]
• 2010 Elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP)
• 2018 Elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci)^[12][16]
• 2021: Awarded the Sir Rickard Christophers Medal^[17]

• The growing burden of tuberculosis: global trends and interactions with the HIV epidemic^[18]
• Tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa: opportunities, challenges, and change in the era of antiretroviral treatment^[19]
• HIV-1/AIDS and the control of other infectious diseases in Africa^[20]

Corbett is married with two children.^[4]