Françoise Barre-Sinoussi—who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for medicine with fellow researcher Luc Montagnier for discovering HIV in 1983—says that the world economic crisis will hurt medical research, Agence France-Presse reports.

“When there are financial problems in the world, we know there will be an impact on the health sector, on research,” she told RTL radio.

In the same interview, Barre-Sinoussi called for particular attention to funding AIDS research in her home country of France, noting that poor salaries are deterring many young French researchers from entering the field.