- James Wood, Cambridge University UK:
"Evolution of Influenza Viruses".
James Wood is a veterinary epidemiologist and Alborada Professor of
Equine and Farm Animal Medicine in the University of Cambridge
Department of Veterinary Medicine, which he joined to direct the
Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium. He conducts
multidisciplinary research on infectious diseases and his research
interests are focussed on infectious disease emergence, including
studies of mammalian (pig and horse) influenza virus transmission
and adaptation, pandemic influenza H1N1 impact in pigs, including
zoonotic transfer and emergence of RNA viruses from fruit bats in
Africa; this work includes development of methods to interpret such
data. Research activities also include collaborative studies of
control of bovine tuberculosis and bluetongue. He has numerous
collaborators, including at WT Sanger Institute, VLA, IoZ, AHT,
IAH, Warwick, Glasgow, University of Ghana and IDS STEPS
Centre.
Recently, he has collaborated with colleagues in Cambridge to
establish a programme aimed at strengthening institutional links
between Cambridge and African Institutions.
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- Sarah Cleaveland, PhD, Glasgow University
UK:
"Identifying virus reservoirs in complex ecosystems:
new tools for an old problem".
Professor Sarah Cleaveland is a veterinary epidemiologist at the
University of Glasgow at the Institute for Biodiversity, Animal
Health and Comparative Medicine. She obtained her Ph.D. in
1996 from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and
subsequently worked at the Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine,
University of Edinburgh before moving on to the University of
Glasgow in 2008.
Her research programme is focused in East Africa addressing a range
of disease problems at the human, domestic animal and wildlife
interface. Her research on rabies in dogs has demonstrated
that eliminating canine rabies in Africa is feasible and would
provide a cost effective way for preventing human rabies
deaths. Current research in Tanzania focuses on livestock
viral infections, including FMD and MCF, and bacterial zoonoses
that cause human febrile illness.
In 2008, Professor Cleaveland was presented with the Trevor
Blackburn Award in recognition of her veterinary work overseas by
the British Veterinary Association. She is also a founding Director
of the Alliance for Rabies Control (www.rabiescontrol.org) which
spearheads the World Rabies Day campaigns
(www.worldrabiesday.org).
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- Stuart Nichol, Special Pathogens Branch,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta USA:
"Rift Valley fever: hitting a moving target with a One Health
approach".
Stuart T. Nichol, Ph.D., is Chief of the Viral Special Pathogens
Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta, U.S.A., where he has worked for the past 20
years. Dr. Nichol serves on the editorial boards of multiple
journals and on multiple international advisory committees. He
is an expert on viral hemorrhagic fevers and emerging viral disease
and has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications on these
topics.
His accomplishments have been recognized by numerous awards
including the Harry M. Rose Lecturer (Columbia Univ. College of
Physicians and Surgeons), the Ho Wang Lee Lecturer (American
Society of Virology), the Dalrymple-Young Memorial Award (American
Committee on Arthropod-borne Viruses), and the Pekka Halonen Award
in Diagnostic Virology (CDC). Dr. Nichol received his Ph.D.
from the University of Cambridge, England in 1980. He
completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of
California, San Diego from 1980 to 1984.
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- Christian Drosten, University of Bonn,
Germany:
"Bats as reservoirs for virus infections".
Professor Dr. med. Christian Drosten is since 2007 full
Professor and Head of the Institute of Virology at the University
of Bonn Medical Centre, Bonn, GermanyInstitut für Virologie.
The Institute of Virology in Bonn serves a 1300 bed University
hospital in the most populous area of Germany. Its diagnostic
laboratories cover all human viruses, with a full spectrum of
diagnostic techniques and a strong focus on molecular diagnostics.
Research focuses on emerging viral diseases, using Coronaviruses,
Alphaviruses and Flaviviruses as main model organisms. Chief
questions are the ecological and molecular mechanisms that
determine the process of crossing of species barriers and the
determinants in this process that can be used for an
experimentally-proven risk assessment of reservoir-borne viruses,
in order to predict and prevent epidemic viral diseases. Methods
include RNA virus reverse genetics, cell biology and animal
experimentation, metagenomics and phylogenetics.
After his study at the University of Frankfurt/M, Medical School he
became in 2000 Staff physician/scientist at the Department of
Virology from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical
Medicine in Hamburg, in 2002 Laboratory head,of
Molecular Diagnostics, Bernhard Nocht Institute and in
2005 Head, Clinical Virology, Bernhard Nocht Institute.
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- Oliver
Pybus, University of Oxford UK:
"Viral evolution: endless forms most probable".
Oliver Pybus is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at
the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, and Tutor for
Biology at New College, Oxford. He is interested in
understanding the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens, particularly
viral infections of humans such as HIV, the Hepatitis C Virus,
influenza, and the flaviviruses. He hopes to explain how
evolutionary and ecological processes - which occur on the same
timescale for many pathogens - combine and interact in natural
populations.
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- Carmina Gallardo, CISA/INIA, Madrid,
Spain:
''African swine fever in Africa: The role of the African
indigenous pigs in the transmission of the disease".
Dr. Carmina Gallardo obtained in 1998 the B.S. Pharmacy by the
Faculty of Pharmacy (UCM, Madrid, Spain) and in June 2003 the PhD
degree on Molecular Biology in the Science Faculty (UAM, Madrid,
Spain) presented a Thesis titled "Development of new serological
and molecular diagnosis methods of African swine fever"with
qualification: ExcellentCum Laude.
Since 1999 has been working on African swine fever (ASF) for the
National and International Reference Laboratories at the Animal
Health Research Center (CISA-INIA). Since 2004, she was as an
employed researcher at the International Research Livestock
Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi (Kenya) and in CISA-INIA within the
project: "Development of new diagnostic assays and epidemiological
surveillance of viral pathogens of livestock in Africa". Current
she is Researcher, Laboratory Coordinator of the European Union
reference laboratory for African swine fever (ASF) at
CISA-INIA.
Her main expertise is in R&D on African swine fever (ASF),
mainly related to the development of new diagnostic tools,
molecular epidemiology and/or control strategies. More than fifteen
scientific publications are directly involved with the new
developments.
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