Project Summary This application is a proposed renewal of Dr. Davey Smith's K24 grant entitled `Mentoring Translational Research in HIV'. This grant supported the training of over 30 trainees and 80 publications to date. While significant progress in HIV research continues to be made, it is not likely that a safe and effective cure or vaccine for HIV will be developed soon. The success of these goals will depend on future HIV researchers, many of whom are likely to be trained in the next five years. The goal of this K24 proposal is to provide Dr. Smith with sufficient support to mentor trainees in state-of-the-art translational and patient oriented HIV research and to expand his involvement in UCSD's wide array of training programs. This application is built upon funded and ongoing research projects, where the mentee is the primary leader and is trained in every aspect of study design, execution, analyses, results interpretation and publication. The presented studies provide opportunities for in-depth mentoring as well as investigation into important and open scientific questions in HIV pathogenesis. These goals will be met in the following three aims with a core group of junior and senior trainees. SPECIFIC AIM 1: To determine how co-infections impact HIV pathogenesis. SPECIFIC AIM 2: To develop and validate new molecular virology technology. SPECIFIC AIM 3: To use molecular epidemiologic methods to inform HIV prevention.