Courtesy of Gilead Sciences, Inc 8 min read This piece is part of our first-annual Health Care Heroes series, where we spotlight people doing amazing things in the health care and medical fields. Read the rest of the stories here . IT’S BEEN ALMOST 50 years—yep, five-zero—since the HIV epidemic began, yet it remains an ongoing public health crisis as more than a million people globally continue to become infected with the virus each year. And while the U.S. has an ambitious goal to end HIV by 2030 , which includes preventing new HIV infections and reducing HIV-related disparities and equities, it doesn’t come without its challenges. Helping to meet that challenge are people like Tomas Cihlar, PhD, senior vice president of virology at Gilead, who oversees antiviral drug discovery and preclinical research at the pharmaceutical company. Cihlar started working at Gilead more than three decades ago, where he’s dedicated his career to fighting viral infections from HIV to hepatitis to COVID-19.…