Dr. Barbara Castelnuovo is an infectious disease specialist and the Head of the Research Department at the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) at the Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS). She obtained her PhD at the University of Antwerp; her doctorate research was based on the cohorts she has set up and analyzed.

To date, Dr. Castelnuovo has co-authored over 50 publications. Her research contributed to the update in antiretroviral treatment guidelines at IDI and is part of the body of work which resulted into the inclusion of viral monitoring. She also demonstrated that provider-based electronic medical records can be used in Sub-Saharan Africa and lead to a reduction in errors and missing information, while both providers and patients appreciate the automation of some tasks.

Within the R4GH initiative, she is the IDI-based scientific leader and offers mentoring to the research fellows and doctoral students from the University of Zurich. She is a co-founder of the R4GH initiative.