Sharon is the Director of the Doherty Institute, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne Laureate Professor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, and the inaugural Director of the Cumming Global Centre for Pandemic Therapeutics. She is an infectious diseases physician and virologist who completed her medical degree and doctoral studies in virology at Monash University, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr David Ho at Rockefeller University in New York. Her research focuses on understanding why HIV persists during treatment, developing clinical trials aimed at finding a cure for HIV infection, and developing novel antiviral therapies for respiratory viruses of pandemic potential. In 2014, she was named Melburnian of the Year, and in 2019, she was awarded the rank of Officer of the Order of Australia for services to infectious diseases and HIV and AIDS. She is the immediate past President of the International AIDS Society and leads a national network for pandemic preparedness called APPRISE.