Professor Helen Rees is Executive Director of the University of Witwatersrand’s largest research institute, Wits RHI, where she is a Professor in Ob/Gyn and Co-Director of ALIVE, the Wits African Leadership in Vaccinology Expertise Centre. She is an Honorary Professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University. She is recognised for her work on HIV, vaccines and reproductive health and respected for her ability to synthesize recommendations from multifaceted inputs and to link research to policy. She Chairs the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority and WHO’s African Regional Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, she Chairs GAVI's Programme and Policy Committee, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI) Scientific Advisory Board. She has over 200 publications, has delivered over 200 plenary and keynote addresses including on HPV vaccines, has chaired over 100 national and international scientific and policy committees, and served or chaired more than 100 conferences. She was the focal point and working group member that made recommendations on the developing South African national policy and research agenda for HPV vaccines, a focal point on WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on HPV vaccines and chaired the first WHO expert consultations on HPV vaccines. Within Wits RHI she supported the development of an HPV research focus on HPV epidemiology in the context of HIV, and implementation science research focusing on the preparation of the public health sector for the introduction of HPV vaccines. She is now the chair of a BMGF Technical Working Group that reviews current science and the research agenda for single-dose HPV vaccines. Professor Rees has won numerous international and national awards for contribution to global health and to science, including an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II.