I am a gynaecologic oncologist and have been working in the field of cervical cancer prevention in collaboration with colleagues from Columbia University, New York since 1995. We began our collaboration with the intention of evaluating alternative strategies for the prevention of cervical cancer in low resource settings. Cervical cancer was and remains the commonest cancer diagnosed among women living in poor countries due to the failure to either initiate or sustain cytology based screening programs. Our group pioneered the search for alternative protocols for the prevention of cervical cancer in community-based research sites in townships just outside of Cape Town. Since that time I have had extensive research experience in cervical cancer prevention, including three cross-sectional studies comparing different screening tests (such as HPV testing and VIA to cytology), a prophylactic HPV vaccine trial in HIV positive women and a therapeutic vaccine trial in HPV negative women. We are currently engaged in a NCI funded trial evaluating screen and treat with the HPV Xpert Cepheid HPV test. I am still fully functional as a clinician in all aspects of gynaecology oncology and have recently been appointed the director of the SA Medical Research Council Gynaecological Cancer Research Centre, with 5 years of guaranteed funding.