ESWI Respiratory Virus Summit 2024

Position: Director of the Center of Infection Medicine and Zoonosis Research and Guest-Professor at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover.



Research fields: Emerging virus infections of humans and animals



Professor Osterhaus is Director of the Center of Infection Medicine and Zoonosis Research at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany, and cofounder/CSO of Viroclinics-DDL BV and ViroNative BV (both spin-outs of Erasmus MC) and CR2O. He was head of the Department of Viroscience at Erasmus MC Rotterdam until 2014.



He has a long track record as a researcher and project leader of numerous major scientific projects. At Erasmus MC, he has run a diagnostic virology lab with more than 40 staff and a research virology lab with over 150 personnel. His research programme follows an integrated “viroscience” concept, bringing together world-leading scientists in molecular virology, immunology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, and intervention studies for human and animal virus infections.



Among his major accomplishments are the discovery of more than 70 new viruses of humans and animals (e.g. human metapneumovirus, coronaviruses, influenza viruses), elucidation of the pathogenesis of major human and animal virus infections, and development of novel intervention strategies. This has enabled health authorities like the WHO to effectively combat disease outbreaks like SARS and avian influenza. The established spin-outs are among his other societally relevant successes, allowing effective testing and refining of diagnostic tools and other intervention strategies.



Professor Osterhaus has acted as mentor for more than 80 PhD students and holds several key patents. He is the author of more than 1300 papers in peer-reviewed journals, together cited more than 75,000 times with an H index of 120. He holds several senior editorships and has received numerous prestigious awards. He is a member of the Dutch and German National Academies of Sciences, member of the Belgium Academia of Medicine, and Commander of the Order of the Dutch Lion.

Dr Falsey is a Professor of Medicine at the University Of Rochester School Of Medicine.
The focus of her research has been clinical and translational research in the field of respiratory viral infections in adults. Dr Falsey received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology at Providence College and Doctorate in Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital at the University of Rochester and infectious disease fellowship at Yale University and the University of Rochester. Initially the focus of her research was defining the epidemiology and impact of respiratory syncytial virus in adult populations. More recently, Dr Falsey has broadened her research to include numerous viral respiratory pathogens including influenza, coronaviruses, parainfluenza viruses and human metapneumovirus. She has conducted numerous adult surveillance and vaccine studies in a variety of settings including ambulatory older adult clinics, nursing homes and senior daycare centers. She has extensive experience in the development and performance of diagnostic and serologic assays for influenza and other respiratory viruses including cell culture, RT-PCR, EIA and neutralization assays. Dr Falsey has been a standing member of the Clinical Studies and Field Research Study Section and has served as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous NIH study section reviews. She is a member of the steering committee for the Global Influenza Initiative, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Virology Society. Dr Falsey has published over 200 peer reviewed articles, reviews, book chapters and abstracts.

Ber Oomen is the Executive Director of ESNO, European Specialist Nurses Organisation. He is responsible for several projects to promote and represent the interests of Specialist Nurses in a European context. In this capacity, since 2006 he has built strong relations with agencies such as the European Medicines Agency and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and is frequently in contact with DG Santé at the European Commission.

In parallel, he has developed solid and trusted contacts with colleagues from other European organisations for health care professionals. He still practices as a nurse two days each week, spending the rest of his time in his management role for ESNO, to advance different health projects, acting as a bridge between ESNO’s members and the European Institutions, platforms or forums, coordinating ESNO’s response to international health threats and creating opportunities for the association and its members. In his role, he is also the project leader of the European Nurses Guide on Vaccination, AMR and Infection control and engaged in a number of European projects related to vaccination.

Dexter Wiseman is a Clinical Research Fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute and an Honorary SpR at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS trust. He is also a trainee Respiratory and General Internal Medicine physician in the North West London deanery.

As part of his research project Dexter is currently working in Professor Jadwiga 'Wisia' Wedzicha's lab, helping run the London COPD exacerbation cohort. His research interests include viral causes for COPD exacerbation, specifically looking at the role RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) has to play both at exacerbation and during periods of stability.

Dexter is a member of the international consortium RESCEU (REspiratory Syncytial virus Consortium in EUrope) and works closely with Professor Peter Openshaw and Dr Ryan Thwaites investigating the immunological markers of RSV susceptibility in COPD patients.

Dr Walsh received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Manhattan College and an MD degree from SUNY-Downstate Medical Center in 1974. He completed his residency at the URMC Strong Memorial Hospital in 1977 and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases in 1982. Since then he has been faculty in the Department of Medicine and a member Infectious Diseases division at the University of Rochester. Dr Walsh is head of the ID unit at Rochester General Hospital where his clinical activities and research activities are based.

MD, PhD, Head of Paediatrics, Director of Translational Paediatrics and Infectious Diseases at the Hospital Clínico Universitario de Santiago (Spain), Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Santiago and Academician of the Royal Academy of Medicine and Surgery of Galicia.
His main research interests are: vaccines, infectious diseases, meningococcal disease, host genetics, and biomarkers. He has directly managed or directed as PI more than 50 competitive research projects (2 FP7, 4 H2020 and 3 IMI2), 80 phase I to III vaccine clinical trials, and 25 collaboration grants related to infectious diseases and genomics.

Nationality: Ethiopian

Position: PhD Student, Addis Ababa University and Armauer Hansen Research Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Research Fields: Viral Etiologies and diagnostic biomarkers of acute lower respiratory infections, the burden and prevention strategies options of RSV in Africa

Short description:  Fiseha Wadilo Wada has successfully completed his Bachelor's Degree (BSc) in Medical Laboratory Technology, followed by earning his Master's Degree (MSc) in Medical Microbiology. He has been serving as a university lecturer at Wolaita Sodo University for over four years, where he teaches courses such as medical microbiology, immunology, virology, parasitology, and clinical laboratory methods. Furthermore, he has published 19 research papers in reputable international journals. Currently, his research focuses on investigating the viral etiologies and diagnostic biomarkers of acute lower respiratory infections in children under the age of five in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is also actively involved in researching various prevention strategies for RSV.

Heidi Theeten, MD, PhD, currently has a main position in the infectious disease control team of the Care department (Departement Zorg) of the Flemish government, where she started in October 2020. She joined the vaccine subunit of this team in 2023. Next to this, she has an academic position at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease department, University of Antwerp, where she works since 2001. She coordinated clinical vaccine studies of various diseases, seroprevalence studies at national level as well as vaccination coverage studies in Flanders. As a postdoctoral researcher, she added research on CMV and immunosenescence, and on pneumococcal nasopharyngeal carriage in infants in Belgium. She still teaches in the master of Medicine at UAntwerpen and in the inter-universitary manama Youth Health Care, as an associate professor.

Dr Jarosław Waligóra is a Deputy Head of Unit in the Health Security unit in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Food Safety. In the same directorate he worked before on heath research, rare diseases, cancer, nutrition and physical activity policy. By training he is Medical Doctor, Paediatrician and specialist in Clinical Genetics. He obtained his PhD at the Medical University of Warsaw.

Johan Neyts (CV) is full professor of virology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He teaches virology at the medical school and at the school of dentistry. His lab has a long-standing expertise in the development of antiviral strategies and drugs against emerging and neglected viral infections (such as dengue and other flaviviruses, Chikungunya, enteroviruses, noroviruses, coronaviruses, HEV and rabies). His lab is also intensively involved in the development of antivirals against SARS-CoV2. A second focus of the lab is the development of novel vaccine technologies. To that end the yellow fever vaccine is being used as a vector.  Using this technology the team developed a potent single shot SARS-CoV2 vaccine candidate. The PLLAV (Plasmid Launched Live Attenuated Virus) technology, together with the team of Prof. Kai Dallmeier also developed in his lab, allows to rapidly engineer highly thermostable vaccines against multiple viral pathogens. Johan Neyts is past president of the International Society for Antiviral Research (www.isar-icar.com). He is the co-founder of KU Leuven spin-offs AstriVax www.astrivax.com and Okapi Sciences. Four classes of antivirals discovered in his laboratory have been licensed to major pharmaceutical companies (two on HCV, one on dengue and one on rhino/enteroviruses). He published >625 papers in peer reviewed journals and has given ~300 invited lectures; he is regularly interviewed by lay-press.

Johan L. van der Plas is a physician and clinical pharmacologist at the Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. He is currently attending his specialist training to become a certified Clinical Microbiologist. He defended his PhD titled ‘Advances in Clinical Development for Vaccines and Therapeutics against Respiratory Virus Infections’ in 2023. His PhD was conducted at the Centre of Human Drug Research (Leiden) and consisted of early phase clinical trials for vaccines against RSV and influenza, antivirals against SARS-CoV-2 and explored innovative clinical trial and regulatory infrastructures to expedite clinical development of anti-infectives during pandemics. He is an experienced clinical trial manager and functioned as a project leader on more than 15 trials (including compounds directed against RSV, influenza, SARS-CoV-2, malaria and immunotherapy). He is experienced in intranasal administration, (non-)invasive mucosal sampling, handling of GMO-vaccines and the validation and application of controlled human infections models in early phase clinical trials. Next to his clinical work at the university hospital, he is a guest researcher at the Centre of Human Drug Research and sits on a strategic advisory committee for the development of a novel glycopeptide antibiotic developed by the Leiden University.

Lucy Mosscrop is a final year PhD student in the group of Professor John Tregoning at Imperial College London, co-supervised by Professor Maria Zambon (UK Health Security Agency/UKHSA) and Professor Peter Openshaw (NHLI, Imperial College London). Her work is supported by the Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections in collaboration with UKHSA. 

Lucy’s research focus is on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) specifically the fusion or F protein and how it has evolved and may continue to evolve as new interventions are implemented. As part of this work, she has collaborated extensively with UKHSA to help set up an improved RSV whole-genome sequencing assay (WGS) which has since been used to sequence over 1000 RSV-positive clinical samples from the UK (data available on GISAID). She is using this surveillance data to screen for potential RSV monoclonal antibody resistance mutations and test the biological consequences of these changes via reverse genetics systems. Ultimately hoping to establish a pipeline of surveillance, phenotyping and continuous monitoring.

I received my degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Palermo, Italy in 2020. Since 2021, I’ve been attending the Graduate School of Geriatrics and Gerontology from the same University. Before starting the Graduate School, I worked on the COVID-19 vaccination campaign as a vaccination doctor. My research is mainly focused on the most common diseases affecting older people, such as neurocognitive disorders. I’m the author of two articles published in international scientific journals.

Nationality: British 

Position: Respiratory physician and mucosal immunologist, Professor of Experimental Medicine, Imperial College, London

Research fields: Lung immunology, RSV, received a lifetime achievement in work on RSV research (Chanock prize, US, in 2012)

ESWI member since 2008

Peter Openshaw is a respiratory physician and mucosal immunologist, studying how the immune system both protects against viral infection but also causes disease. He has worked on RSV and influenza since the mid-1980s, leading a large Wellcome Trust funded national collaboration: Mechanisms of Severe Acute Influenza Consortium MOSAIC (2009-12), recruiting cases of severe influenza during the influenza pandemic of 2009-2010.

He has run studies of human experimental infection of volunteers for over 12 years and is Director of the MRC-funded HIC-Vac consortium established to promote the use of human experimental infection to accelerate vaccine development for pathogens of high global impact. Furthermore, he served as President of the British Society for Immunology (2013-18) and is a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences–British Society for Immunology expert taskforce on the immunology of COVID-19.

He has been a member of SAGE (2009-12), Chair and now vice-Chair or NERVTAG, a Department of Health committee horizon-scanning for emerging respiratory threats. He is a member of the UK Vaccine Network and several committees and Boards that oversee research on the immunology of respiratory infection.

He is Theme Lead for Infection at the Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Respiratory Infections Section Head within the National Heart and Lung Institute and an NIHR Senior Investigator. He co-leads ISARIC4C, a UK-wide consortium established in 2020 to study the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roxana joined IFA as a project officer in 2022. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Science, specializing in Nutrition Science from Ryerson University, and is working towards a concurrent dual Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Public Health (MPH). Roxana has been involved in many researchand policy-based projects in non-profit, governmental,and intergovernmental organizations, further developingher interests and skills concerning the social determinants of health, research, and health advocacy.

Roxana is experienced in the area of research, integrated with an empathetic driven mindset acquired from her professional experiences. She has worked in the Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility, supporting the program evaluation of the Seniors Active Living Centres, as well as has been directly involved in the development of the Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Framework, supported by the Ontario Digital Service from the Ministry of Finance.

Ruth A. Karron, M.D.

Professor, International Health

Bloomberg School of Public Health

Joint Appointment, Pediatrics

School of Medicine

Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Karron is a pediatric infectious diseases physician, virologist, and vaccinologist, Professor in the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Director of the Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative.  Dr. Karron has substantial experience in the evaluation of respiratory virus vaccines in adult and pediatric populations.  Her research interests also include the development of immune responses to respiratory viral infections in early life, the epidemiology of RSV and other respiratory viral diseases in low resource settings, and public policy and ethical issues related to vaccine development and distribution. Dr. Karron has been a member of a number of national and international vaccine advisory committees and panels, including the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the COVAX ACT-acclerator COVID Vaccine Maternal Immunization Working Group, and is a current member of the GAVI VIS Steering Committee. She has chaired the FDA Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and the Vaccines Advisory Panel for the Wellcome Trust, and currently chairs the WHO Product Development for Vaccines Advisory Committee (PDVAC). In 2016, Dr. Karron received the Robert M. Chanock award for outstanding lifetime contributions to RSV research. 

BSc (Hons), MBBS, FRCPCH, PhD, PgDip PID (Oxford)

I am a consultant and clinical lead in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK and an honorary senior lecturer at St George’s, University of London (SGUL).  I lead the St George’s congenital infection clinic, am the hospital’s paediatric antimicrobial stewardship lead and am the South-West London lead for post-COVID19 syndrome. I am the chief examiner for penultimate year medical students at SGUL and teach on multiple undergraduate and postgraduate courses in SGUL and externally.  I am the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) paediatric immunology and infectious diseases college specialty advisory committee (CSAC) training advisor. I also work as a member of several large European collaborative research studies, and act as chief and principal investigator on multiple clinical trials investigating diagnostics, novel treatments, and prophylactics for a variety of infectious conditions.  My main research interests are perinatal infections, antimicrobial resistance and stewardship and epidemiology, management and prevention and host susceptibility to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and other respiratory viral infections. I also sit on multiple local, national, and international committees related to paediatrics including the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) RSV subcommittee and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) Paediatric Medicine Expert Advisory Group (PMEAG).

A geriatrician, former John Franklin Chair of Geriatrics and Director of the Glennan Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology at Eastern Virginia Medical School (1996-2007), and Director of Center for Geriatrics and Palliative Care at University Hospitals in Cleveland (2014-2017), he is now the David S. Greer Professor of Geriatrics and Professor in the departments of Medicine and Health Services Policy and Practice at Brown's schools of medicine and public health. He serves as the Director, Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Associate Director of the Center on Innovation in Long-Term Services and Supports at the Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center. Dr. Gravenstein has a long-standing interest in immunity, inflammation, cardiovascular outcomes and aging especially in the context of vaccines and the long-term care setting, and the topic of the majority of his publications. He also has a specific interest in quality improvement in health care, the culture of care, antimicrobial stewardship, and how to improve care transitions. Beginning in 2020, he became active in several projects related to COVID in long-term care. He was Clinical Director at Healthcentric Advisors, Medicare's Quality Improvement Organization for New England from 2007 to 2019. 

Nationality: Italian

Position: Research Director, CNR Ageing Branch, Neuroscience Institute, Padova (Italy)

Research Fields: Clinical epidemiology and geriatrics. Main focus on lifelong approach to healthy ageing

ESWI member since 2022

Dr. Stefania Maggi received her degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Padua, Italy in 1983. She also attended the Graduate School of Geriatrics and Gerontology from the same University until 1987 and in 1988 she received her Master in Public Health from John Hopkins University in Baltimore (USA). Dr. Maggi also holds a PhD in Clinical Pathophysiology from the University of Padua, which she received in 2000.

Dr. Maggi has a specific interest in the epidemiology of ageing and in the analysis of factors promoting health ageing in a lifelong approach. From 1983-1985, Dr. Maggi worked as an attending physician at the Internal Medicine Department for the University Hospital in Padua before she spent the years of 1988-1989 as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), for the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland (USA). From 1989-1993, she worked as the Coordinator for the WHO Program on Ageing, before she moved on to work as a researcher in the Ageing branch at the Institute of Neuroscience, Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche (CNR), Padua. Dr. Maggi worked as a researcher from 1993-2007 before becoming Research Director for the same branch and institute, in 2007, a position she currently holds. In this position, she coordinates several national and international research projects on nutrition, vaccines and lifestyle as key factors for promoting healthy ageing. Dr. Maggi is also an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Schools of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Padua, which she has been since 2000.

Moreover, Dr. Maggi is the Editor in Chief of “Ageing Clinical and Experimental Research” (Springer) and has more than 800 publications, both in peer-reviewed journals and many book chapters.

Professor Terho Heikkinen graduated from the Medical School at the University of Turku in 1984, where he also specialized in Paediatrics and Paediatric Infectious Diseases. He defended his thesis on Development and prevention of acute otitis media in children in 1994. Having received the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship Award, he worked in 1996-1998 as a post-doc Research Fellow at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, USA. Subsequently, he worked as a Senior Clinical Researcher and Clinical Lecturer at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Turku. Since 2016, he has been Professor of Paediatrics at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Turku.

During the years, Terho Heikkinen has served as the chairman or a board member of several international and domestic societies in the field of paediatric infectious diseases, including the President of the World Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases. He is a former board member of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI), a scientific advisory board and executive committee member of the global Respiratory Syncytial Virus Network (ReSViNET), and the chairman of the Nordic Research Network for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (NORDPID).

MD, DMSc, EIS, MPG, Public Health Specialist, Director of Clinical Research.

Background in public health, virology and epidemiology- specialized in virus epidemics. Professor at Univ. of Copenhagen, Denmark in Public Health, Virus Infections and Epidemics.

Prev. positions incl.: Dir. of the National WHO Influenza Centre & WHO Reference Labs for Measles, Rubella & Polio. Sen. Consultant and Head of the Virology Surv. and Research Unit at Statens Serum Institut (SSI), Staff specialist (inf. diseases & health system strengthening) & Acting Head of Int. Affairs at Nat. Board of Health, Resident in intern medicine at Rigshospitalet, Epi researcher at SSI, Denmark (PhD student and postdoc: epi. research incl. mathematical modelling of epidemics and vaccine efficacy), Virology researcher (cultivation, PCR, cloning and sequencing) and EIS (outbreak investigations: response/control of epidemics), CDC, Atlanta, USA and supervisor of Gastro Section at National Public Health Laboratory in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau.

(Co-)authoring >200 peer-reviewed publications (H-index: 42).

National representations for the European Center of Disease Prevention & Control (ECDC):

National Microbiology Focal Point (2012-2018)

National coordinator of the EU Progr. for Public Health Microb. training (EUPHEM) (2012-18)

Member of the Mol. Typing Task Force (2015-18)

Member of the ESCAIDE Scientific Committee (2012-17)

Main research focuses are related to pub. health applied virology incl. surveillance, epidemic control and vaccinology.

Leadership competencies & interests strengthend with a master in public governance at Cph Business School, (thesis "Benchmarking as budget-control tool at public hospitals").



Specialties:

• Member of The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences & Letters (2018)
• Master in Public Governance (2017)
• Professor (Adj SDU) Inf. Dis. & Global Health (2014)
• Public Health Specialist (2010)
• DMSc/Dr med (virology & epidemiology) 2002)
• Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer (EISO) (2003)
• MD (1994)

Nabila initiated her career as a medical officer, earning a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS) in 2013. Expanding her expertise, she specialized in microbiology, achieving a Doctor of Pathology (Medical Microbiology) from the National University of Malaysia (UKM) in 2022. Nabila underwent practical and bioinformatics training for Influenza and RSV Viral genomic sequencing by WHO, Melbourne. Currently, she serves as a clinical microbiologist in the Virology Unit at the Infectious Diseases Research Centre (IDRC), Institute for Medical Research (IMR), National Institute of Health (NIH), Malaysia.

Her role includes acting as the laboratory supervisor for the Molecular Virology Laboratory in the Virology Unit, IMR, NIH, overseeing diagnostic, surveillance, and research activities. The laboratory serves as the National Influenza Centre (NIC) and actively participates in WHO's Global Influenza and SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance. Preparing for expansion, the laboratory aims to incorporate RSV into the surveillance program. Nabila's interests extend to research and development, focusing on in-house RSV diagnostic tests (e.g., multiplex PCR and antigen lateral flow assay), whole-genome sequencing, and vaccine studies. Additionally, she plays a vital role as a member of the IMR's ISO 15189 implementation committee and actively engages in audit activities as a molecular diagnostic laboratories' auditor.

Beyond her laboratory responsibilities, Nabila is a student supervisor and lecturer for the Post-graduate Diploma of Medical Microbiology (DMM), Virology module, conducted by SEAMEO-TROPMED's Regional Centre for Microbiology, Parasitology, and Entomology.