Dr. Barnabas graduated from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, with her medical degree. She received her research doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She completed her Infectious Diseases fellowship at the University of Washington with her postdoctoral work during fellowship at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in the HIV Vaccines Trial Network (HVTN).  She joined the faculty of University of Washington Global Health Department and the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Division of the Department of Medicine and quickly rose through the ranks to full Professor in July 2021.  In January 2022 she became the Francis and Dorothea Reed Endowed Chair in Infectious Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and  Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.