Janice Clements, Ph.D.

Janice E. Clements, Ph.D., is a professor of molecular and comparative pathobiology, the Mary Wallace Stanton Professor for Faculty Affairs and has served as the Vice Dean for Faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine since 2000, where she oversees all policies and programs related to faculty appointments and promotions as well as faculty development.

Her research focuses on lentiviruses and their role in chronic neurological disease. She developed the first molecular and biochemical tools to study lentivirus molecular biology and was the first to characterize the unusual genome of the lentiviruses. She was also the first scientist to report that HIV is a lentivirus.

As director of the Retrovirus Laboratory, she and her team focus on the molecular virology and pathogenesis of lentivirus infections with emphasis on animal models of AIDS dementia and central nervous system (CNS) disease. Recent discoveries include the use of minocycline, a common antibiotic often used against acne, to protect against viral HIV-related cognitive disease.

Dr. Clements received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Maryland. She completed two postdoctoral fellowships at Johns Hopkins—one in molecular biology and virology and the other in neurology. Dr. Clements joined the Johns Hopkins faculty as an assistant professor of neurology in 1979 and then the faculty of the Division of Comparative Medicine in 1988. She was promoted to professor in 1990.