Dr. Rachel Bender Ignacio MD MPH is Director of UW Positive Research, the Robert W. Anderson Endowed Chair of Medicine in HIV Research and Associate Professor in the Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Washington. She is a joint Associate Professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Division at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center.  Dr. Bender Ignacio completed her A.B with Honors at Dartmouth College and her MD and master’s in public health in epidemiology both at the University of Washington. She trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and was on clinical faculty at Harvard Medical School before completing a fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Washington, where she has been on faculty since 2015.  Dr. Bender is an attending physician on the Infectious Diseases/HIV service at Harborview Medical Center and the Solid Organ Transplant ID service at University of Washington Medical Center and maintains an active HIV primary care practice.

Dr. Bender Ignacio is a physician-scientist whose primary focus is clinical trials for HIV and HIV-associated conditions, including co-infections and cancer.  She has served as a local and national leader in clinical trials at UW and through the NIH-affiliated ACTG network, most recently for novel combinations of long-acting antiretroviral therapy for HIV treatment. One study she led was featured on the front page of the New York Times in 2024.  She also served as Director of the Fred Hutch’s COVID-19 Clinical Research Center from 2020-2024 and led much of UW/Fred Hutch’s outpatient COVID-19 therapeutics research as well as 2 arms of the NIH’s international platform ACTIV-2 COVID-19 treatment trial.  She has also brought together a consortium of HIV and cancer researchers to focus on implementation science to improve coordinated HIV and cancer treatment in Southern and East Africa.  Her translational work focuses on the intersection of immune activation, viral co-infections, and cancers. Dr. Bender Ignacio is an enthusiastic mentor who works with early career physicians, clinical trialists, epidemiologists, and implementation scientists at all stages of training.  In addition to her academic work, Dr. Bender Ignacio served on the Board of Directors for the HIV Medicine Association from 2019-2022 recently completed  her term as the inaugural Chair of Advocacy sub-Committee for HIVMA and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, working passionately in these roles to further policy and funding for HIV and Infectious Diseases care and research.