| Marc Bonten UMC Utrecht / AMR Marc Bonten is professor Molecular Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases and head of the department of Medical Microbiology at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. He is also leading the research group of Infectious Disease Epidemiology of the Julius Center of Health Sciences and Primary Care and acts as advisor for Antimicrobial Resistance at the RIVM (Centre for Infection Prevention of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) for Infectious Disease Control. Bonten has been a principal investigator in many large-scale epidemiological studies and investigator-initiated randomized trials of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases (MOSAR, SATURN, R-GNOSIS, PREPARE). His experience covers the full range of epidemiologic study designs, including clinical trials, cohorts, case-control studies and mathematical modelling. His major achievements include the first theoretical frameworks for the nosocomial dynamics of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (VRE and MRSA), elucidating the molecular epidemiology of global spread of VRE, quantifying different infection prevention measures to limit spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens and the occurrence of ICU acquired infections, and building large (inter)national collaborations. Marc Bonten has been (co-)applicant of a large number of grants from (national) research councils, the European Commission and pharmaceutical companies. He authored over 600 publications in peer-reviews journals, of which a large proportion of high impact (New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, PNAS, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases). He supervised 50 PhD students (and currently supervises 24). He was awarded the ICAAC Young Investigator Award (2000), a NWO VICI grant in 2007 and the ESCMID Award for Excellence in Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (2015). | |
| Adolfo García-Sastre Pathogens Institute of Icahn School of Medicine Dr. García- Sastre is Professor in the Departments of Microbiology and Medicine and Director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. For the past 25 years, his research interest has been focused on the molecular biology of influenza viruses and several other negative strand RNA viruses. During his post-doctoral training in the early 1990s, he developed, for the first time, novel strategies for expression of foreign antigens by a negative strand RNA virus, influenza virus. He has made major contributions to the influenza virus field, including 1) the development of reverse genetics techniques allowing the generation of recombinant influenza viruses from plasmid DNA, (studies in collaboration with Dr. Palese); 2) the generation and evaluation of negative strand RNA virus vectors as potential vaccine candidates against different infectious diseases, including malaria and AIDS, and 3) the identification of the biological role of the non structural protein NS1 of influenza virus during infection: the inhibition of the type I interferon (IFN) system. His studies provided the first description and molecular analysis of a viral-encoded IFN antagonist among negative strand RNA viruses. These studies led to the generation of attenuated influenza viruses containing defined mutations in their IFN antagonist protein that might prove to be optimal live vaccines against influenza. His research has resulted in more than 500 scientific publications and reviews. Dr. García-Sastre is the director of the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis, one of the five NIAID funded Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance. He was among the first members of the Vaccine Study Section and member of the Virology B Study Section of NIH. In addition, he has served for 5 years as Editor in Journal of Experimental Medicine, is Editor in PLoS Pathogens, Journal of Virology and Virus Research, and member of the Editorial Board of Virology, Vaccine, NPJ Vaccines, Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology and Influenza and Other Respiratory Diseases. He is a member of the scientific advisory board of Keystone Symposia. He has been a co-organizer of the international course on Viral Vectors (2001), held in Heidelberg, Germany, sponsored by Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), and of the first Research Conference on Orthomyxoviruses in 2001, held in Teixel, The Netherlands, sponsored by the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI). He has also been a co-organizing of the 7th International Society for Vaccines meeting in 2013, and of Keystone Meetings in 2014 on Respiratory Virus Pathogenesis and in 2017 on Interferons. His publication in Science on the reconstruction and characterization of the pandemic influenza virus of 1918 has been awarded with the distinction of the paper of the year 2005 by Lancet. In 2005, he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and in 2009, he received the Beijerink Professorship from the National Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands. In 2011, he has been elected President of the International Society for Vaccines, for 2014 and 2015. In 2017, he has been elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy in Spain. | |
| Michelle Linterman Babraham Institute Michelle Linterman is Group Leader at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK. Her laboratory’s principle research focus is on how different cell types collaborate in the germinal centre to generate a robust antibody response following vaccination. Vaccination is one of the most successful, cost-effective interventions for combating infectious disease. Despite this enormous success, there are still multiple circumstances that require a vaccination solution, including vaccines that protect against HIV and malaria, and a way to improve vaccine efficacy in the later years of life. An understanding of the cellular and molecular basis of a productive germinal centre response may be the key to rational vaccine design in cases where breakthroughs in vaccine development are needed. Michelle’s lab is funded by the Bioscience and Biotechnology Research Council and the European Research Council. Michelle is currently an EMBO young investigator.
Michelle received her PhD in Immunology from the Australian National University in Canberra, where she investigated a novel mechanism of immunological tolerance with Prof. Carola Vinuesa. Michelle did a post-doc with Prof. Ken Smith at the University of Cambridge, where she described a population of regulatory T cells within the germinal centre.
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| Nathaniel Martin Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University Nathaniel Martin obtained his PhD in 2004 from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta (Canada) on research into naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides. Upon completion of his PhD he moved to the University of California Berkeley (USA) as a postdoctoral fellow where he developed a number of inhibitors and mechanistic probes for the enzyme nitric oxide synthase (NOS). In 2007 Nathaniel began his independent research career at Utrecht University where he built a dynamic research group working in the fields of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology. Fundamental to the work carried out in the Martin group is the application of synthetic organic chemistry to address biologically interesting and medically relevant questions. Specifically, our research focuses on using new (bio)chemical approaches to combat infectious disease as well as developing new molecular tools with which to study epigenetic processes. | |
| Leonie Taams King’s College London Leonie Taams obtained a BSc/MSc in Medical Biology and a PhD in Immunology from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She undertook postdoctoral training at the Royal Free and University College Medical School in London, and at the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands. In 2003, she joined the Division of Immunology, Infection & Inflammatory Disease at King’s College London (KCL) as Lecturer in Immunology. As a postdoc in Prof Akbar’s lab she identified and characterized the so-called “regulatory T cells” in humans and at KCL her lab was one of the first groups to describe the cellular mechanisms that induce human Th17 cells. Dr Leonie Taams is now Professor of Immune Regulation & Inflammation and director of the Centre for Inflammation Biology & Cancer Immunology at King’s College London. Her research group investigates how inflammation is switched on and off, and why this goes awry in chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis. Recently her group has demonstrated that TNF inhibitory drugs can promote the expression of anti-inflammatory IL-10 in in human immune cells. In addition to her research activities, Leonie is Chair of the Exam Board and Deputy Program Director for the MSc Immunology, Associate Director of the FOCIS Centre of Excellence at KCL, and a member of the scientific steering committee for the European Workshop for Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Diseases. She is also the Programme Secretary and a Trustee of the British Society for Immunology (BSI), and past/present member of several international scientific programme committees including ECI and EULAR. In 2012, she was awarded the School of Medicine Supervisory Excellence Award for PhD supervision.
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| Sebastian Winter UT Southwestern Medical Center Sebastian Winter received his M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, in 2006. He then started his Ph.D. thesis research and, under the co-mentorship of Dr. Holger Rüssmann (University of Munich) and Dr. Andreas Bäumler (UC Davis), studied how Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, the causative agent of typhoid fever, can evade recognition by the innate immune system. In 2010, Sebastian Winter obtained his Ph.D. (Dr. rer. biol. hum.) from the University of Munich, Germany. He then continued his postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Andreas Bäumler at UC Davis where he investigated alterations of the intestinal microbiota during episodes of inflammation. In 2013, Dr. Winter joined the Microbiology Department at UT Southwestern and was named a UT Southwestern Endowed Scholar. In 2014, he received an ICAAC Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Microbiology. He was named a Research Scholar by the American Cancer Society in 2017. In 2018, Dr. Winter became a BWF Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases. His independent research group is investigating host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions in the inflamed gut, with a particular interest in inflammatory bowel disease and infection with enteric pathogens. | |
