Deputy Director's Biography

Leslie Marshall, Ph.D.
Acting Deputy Director
NIH Office of AIDS Research

Leslie Marshall, Ph.D., is Acting Deputy Director of the NIH Office of AIDS Research (OAR), where she provides management and scientific leadership in support of the office’s role shaping NIH HIV research priorities and coordinating the NIH HIV research program. She also leads OAR’s HIV clinical research portfolio and the NIH HIV and Women Signature Program.

A molecular virologist and product developer by training with broad experience across academic, government, and industry settings, Dr. Marshall’s tenure at NIH has been marked by significant contributions to the development of the NIH HIV research strategy. She has helped inform priorities, foster collaborations, and support women's health in the HIV research continuum. She joined OAR in January 2022 as a Health Scientist Administrator to manage the biomedical prevention, HIV status and viral load testing technology development, women’s health, neuroHIV, and clinical research portfolios.

Dr. Marshall brought deep knowledge of NIH operations and expertise in basic science to OAR. For nearly a decade, she worked as a contracting officer’s representative in the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). She administered contracts focused on preclinical support for HIV nonvaccine biomedical prevention (nBP) product development and served as a liaison to academic and industry partners, developing strategic approaches to meet regulatory requirements to advance topical microbicides and nBP products to clinical testing. Also at NIH, Dr. Marshall completed a research fellowship studying mechanisms of JC virus neuropathogenesis and latency in the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine and Neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

Prior to joining the NIH, Dr. Marshall worked at Merck Research Laboratories, where she developed analytical methods for HIV and HPV vaccine programs. She holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from Wake Forest University and an undergraduate degree from Susquehanna University.