Professor Paul Sandstrom

Paul Sandstrom received his PhD from the Department of Immunology at the University of Manitoba, where he conducted research on the regulation of tumour progression by the immune system. After completing his postdoctoral research on immune cell regulation and responses to oxidative stress in North Carolina, he joined the HIV/AIDS and Retrovirology Branch of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From 1993 to 2002, he worked as a research scientist at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducting studies on the regulation of HIV-1 expression and developing sentinel surveillance systems to detect and monitor adventitious zoonotic agents that could pose a threat to the blood system.

Paul Sandstrom has authored more than 150 articles accepted in peer-reviewed journals. Since returning to Canada in 2002, he has been the Director of the National HIV and Retrovirology Laboratories, Public Health Agency of Canada.

In this role, he has been responsible for planning, directing and managing laboratory research, surveillance and clinical testing programmes as part of the Federal Initiative on HIV/AIDS. Paul Sandstrom frequently serves as an adviser to WHO on laboratory programming pertaining to HIV drug resistance genotyping and sequencing. He also participated in the response to the Ebola crisis in western Africa, deploying on three occasions to provide Ebola diagnostic support to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières treatment facilities in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

During the COVID-19 response, Sandstrom has worked with Indigenous leadership to implement community-based testing, reduce health inequities and strengthen access to diagnostic testing as part of the PHAC Northern, Remote and Isolated (NRI) initiative.

He is a member of the WHO Steering Group that provides high level guidance and supports in developing and implementing WHO global action plan for HIV drug resistance prevention, surveillance and response and co-chairs the WHO Working Group 4, on Laboratory Capacity.