A University of Kansas chemistry professor has received a $1.38 million federal grant to help with research into HIV vaccines.

Heather Desaire will use the money from the National Institutes of Health to investigate several HIV vaccine candidates. The University of Kansas says she will conduct her work in collaboration with researchers from Duke University Medical Center and Harvard Medical Center.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1.1 million people in the U.S. were infected with HIV at the end of 2009. About 50,000 people are newly infected each year.