Francoise Barre-Sinoussi (1947) is a French virologist, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which she shared with Harald zur Hausen and Luc Montagnier. Under the guidance of Professor Luc Montagnier, she participated in the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1983.

Barre-Sinoussi has been researching retroviruses since the early 1970s. She worked in Luc Montagnier's laboratory and published a scientific article in the journal Science, where she was the first author, about a new virus associated with the development of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

Scientists have discovered that at an early stage of immunodeficiency, patients' lymphocytes produce a certain virus. They found the same virus in the blood of patients at the late stage of the disease.