SPEAKERS

Ilaria Capua (DVM, PhD) is a Senior Fellow of Global Health at Johns Hopkins University – SAIS Europe, Courtesy Professor and Director Emeritus of the One Health Center of Excellence at the University of Florida. She has dedicated much of her career to animal viral infections that can be transmitted to humans, which cause poverty and food security issues such as Avian Influenza, Newcastle Disease and Rabies. She has also worked with international organizations to develop strategies for the prevention and management of health emergencies caused by potentially pandemic viruses. She has published over 230 articles in peer reviewed international journals and has an H-index of 72.  She is currently on the advisory board of several EU projects including REGROUP and DURABLE and am a commissioner of the Lancet Commission on “21st Century Threats to Global Health”. Ilaria has developed the concept of Circular Health which is now the main focus of her teaching and research activities. Ilaria was a Member of the Italian Parliament (2013-2016) and she a columnist for Corriere della Sera.

Dr. Iñaki Comas, Full Professor, is head of the Tuberculosis Genomics Unit at the Institute of Biomedicine of Valencia CSIC, has led pioneering research on tuberculosis and COVID-19 pathogens. His work on TB includes studies on how to use the pathogen's genomic information to improve the local and global control of the disease. His studies had led to new insights into the evolution and epidemiology of the pathogen, emergence and spread of drug resistance and impact of immune responses in the pathogen.

Margarita Del Val studied chemistry at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and trained in virology and molecular biology at Centro de Biología Molecular (CSIC-UAM) in Madrid. She moved into viral immunology in Germany first, and further developed it at Instituto de Salud Carlos III and again at CBMSO. Her research focuses on understanding how the immune system controls virus infections in vivo, with a focus on vaccine improvement through understanding basic immunologic mechanisms of cellular immunity. She is a member of the Royal National Academy of Pharmacy, the Madrid Vaccines Advisory Team, and worked as external adviser for the European Medicines Agency. She heads the Spanish CSIC Interdisciplinary Research Platform on Global Health for fighting the SARS2 coronavirus pandemic. As the pandemic stroke, this background pushed her into front line science dissemination, for which she was awarded the FBBVA-CSIC prize and the UIMP Social Values Medal.

Dr. García-Sastre is Professor in the Department of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai (ISMMS) in New York. He is also Director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at ISMMS. For the past 30 years, his research interest has been focused on the molecular biology, virus-host interactions, innate immunity and pathogenesis of influenza viruses and several other RNA viruses, as well as on the development of new vaccines and antivirals.  He has more than 700 peer-reviewed publications in these areas of research. In 2019, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Inventors.

David Navarro  graduated from Medical School at the University of Valencia (Spain)  in 1985 and achieved his Doctor of Medicine degree in Microbiology and Immunology in the University of Valencia, Spain in 1989. He completed a postdoctoral research associate job (1989-1991) at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

He is currently Full Professor of Microbiology in School of Medicine of Valencia and Head of the Microbiology Service at the Clinic University Hospital, Valencia. His research activity mainly concerns diagnostic, clinical, biological and pathogenesis aspects of herpesvirus infections, especially cytomegalovirus in allogeneic stem-cell and solid organ transplant recipients, as well as in patients with inflammatory diseases and critically ill patients with no canonical immunosuppression and recently SARS-CoV-2.

He has authored or co-authored over 350 publications in intermediate-highly- ranked journals. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Virology, member of the Editorial Board of Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, member of the ECIL group of the European Bone Marrow Transplantation Society (EBMT) and regular reviewer for more than 30 journals.

José Miguel Rubio (Madrid) Doctor en Biología por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (1992). Desde 1998 es miembro del Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), Científico Titular, Responsable de la Unidad de Malaria y Parasitosis Emergentes del Centro Nacional de Microbiología. Forma parte del Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Infecciosas (CIBERINFEC/ISCIII). Ha publicado más de 100 artículos en revistas indexadas internacionales, 10 capítulos de libros y ha sido coeditor de dos libros dentro del área de malaria, medicina tropical y enfermedades olvidadas

Dr. Schotsaert obtained a master’s degree in bio-engineering (2003), a master’s degree in molecular medical biotechnology (2004) and a PhD in molecular biotechnology (2011) from Ghent University (Belgium). In 2013 he moved for postdoctoral work as an immunologist and vaccinologist to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York city. Dr. Schotsaert holds faculty appointments in the Department of Microbiology and the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt Sinai. The Schotsaert laboratory is part of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute, and affiliated with the Icahn Genomics Institute and the Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute. His work focuses on influenza, ZIKA and SARS-CoV-2 viruses and he has over twenty years of experience with studying host-pathogen interactions in preclinical infection models (BSL2, BSL3, BSL3+) to immunologically characterize and validate candidate vaccines, adjuvants and antiviral treatments. From an immunological point of view, his research focuses on the interplay and cross-talk between innate and adaptive immune responses during virus infection, and how they contribute to pathology and protection in the context of comorbidities like obesity, diabetes and advanced age.

Prof. África González-Fernández (MD, PhD, Immunologist) was born in Madrid (Spain) and studied Medicine and Surgery in the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid, Spain) with special honours. She obtained her PhD in the same University and performed the speciality in Immunology as Medical Internal resident (4 years) at the Hospital Puerta de Hierro (Madrid). She spent 4 years as post doc with Dr. Cesar Milstein (Nobel Prize winner for the monoclonal antibody technology) in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology-Medical Research Council (LMB-MRC) in Cambridge (UK).

She returned to Spain becoming Full Professor of Immunology in the University of Vigo (Spain). She is leading a research group in the field of immune response to vaccines, Nanomedicine, toxicity and immunogenicity to nanomaterials. She was Director of the Biomedical Research Center (CINBIO) in the University of Vigo (2009-2019), considered an excellent center by Xunta de Galicia. She was the former President of the Spanish society for Immunology (2016-2020). She has published over 180 papers and book chapters, some of them in very top journals such as Nature, Nature Nanotechnology, Cell, ACS-Nano, PNAS. 

She is regularly invited to give conferences in several international and national congresses, workshops. She developed 4 patents and is co-promoter of the spin-off company called “NanoImmunoTech” (2009- currently). She has been nominated for the EU women innovator Prize (2017), is member of Editorial Boards, and coordinator of institutional EU projects, and summer schools. She is very active in media, press, TV, radio about the COVID pandemic

Dr. Vila is a Senior Consultant at the Department of Clinical Microbiology of the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, Full Professor of the School of Medicine, University of Barcelona, and Research Professor in the Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) of Barcelona, Spain. In this last institution, he is leading the Initiative of Antimicrobial Resistance. His main field of interest is the development of new drugs against MDR bacteria and molecular tools for rapid diagnosis of infectious disease. Dr. Vila was the Programme Director of EECMID from 2009 to 2014 and he was the president of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC) (2019-2021). In addition, he has received (2023) an Award of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology for his excellent career in clinical microbiology. He has published 520 articles in peer-reviewed journals, has an H-index of 99 and 40,235 citations (Google Academia). He has patented five molecules.

Dr Maria P. Neira has been directing the Department of Environment, Climate Change and  Health at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland since September 2005. Throughout her tenure and up until now she has led and advised on policy and management in key areas of environmental health.  

Prior to that she served as Under-Secretary of Health and President of the Spanish Food Safety Agency.  From 1993-1998 she was Coordinator of the Global Task Force on Cholera Control. Dr Neira began her career as a medical coordinator working with refugees in El Salvador and Honduras for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). She then spent several years working in different African countries during armed conflicts.  

Born in the city of Oviedo, Asturias, Dr Neira is a Spanish national, a medical doctor by training and specialized in Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases; and Public Health.  Among many distinctions, she has been awarded the Médaille de l'Ordre national du Mérite by the Government of France and received an “Extraordinary Woman” award by HM Queen Letizia of Spain. In early 2019, she was nominated among the top 100 policy influencers in health and climate change.  

Mario Fernández Ruiz es especialista en Medicina Interna, Magister Universitario en “Infección en el Paciente Inmunodeprimido” por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, y Doctor en Medicina (Premio Extraordinario) por esa misma universidad. Desarrolla su actividad asistencial e investigadora en la Unidad de Enfermedades Infecciosas del Hospital Universitario “12 de Octubre” y en el Instituto de Investigación i+12.

Ha realizado estancias formativas en el Hospital Clinic de Barcelona, en el Multi-Organ Transplant Program del Toronto General Hospital y en el Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois en Lausana. Su principal línea de investigación se centra en la infección en el receptor de trasplante de órgano sólido y otros pacientes inmunodeprimidos, el desarrollo y validación de estrategias de monitorización inmunológica, y la interacción huésped-patógeno. Es autor o coautor de más de 300 publicaciones en revistas nacionales e internacionales, sumando más de 4.500 citas (índice h de 40 [Thomson Reuters Web of Science]).

Entre 2017 y 2021 presidió el Grupo de Estudio de Infección en el Trasplante y el Huésped Inmunocomprometido (GESITRA-IC) de la Sociedad Española de Enfermedades Infecciosas y Microbiología Clínica (SEIMC). Ha recibido, entre otros, el Premio al “Internista Joven del año 2014” concedido por la Sociedad Española de Medicina Interna (SEMI), el Young Investigator Award for Research 2017 otorgado por la European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), y el 2021 Young Investigator Award de la International Immunocompromised Host Society (ICHS).

Dr. Carrillo obtained his bachelor’s in Biology at the University of Cordoba (Spain), and a Ph.D. in Immunology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). He was awarded with the “Best Doctoral Thesis Award” in 2009. After several postdoctoral position in University of Lleida, IrsiCaixa, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (NY, USA). Dr. Carrillo returned to IrsiCaixa in 2015 as associated investigator and co-founded the spin-o AlbaJuna Therapeutics, serving as Chief Scientific O icer.

In 2020, Dr. Carrillo became an independent principal investigator and founded the Immunology Group at IrsiCaixa. From that, He has been granted with five research projects in competitive calls, including a Horizon Europe project as coordinator (101137248 — LWNVIVAT). Dr. Carrillo is part of five patents with worldwide applications: WO/2019/108656, WO/2018/207023, WO/2018/020324, WO/2017/085563 and WO2014037490A1; and an additional one was presented in February 2023. He has co-authored more than 95 papers and supervised four doctoral theses. He has been member of the board of the Spanish Society of Immunology (2018-2022) and is the head of the Ethics Committee for Animal Experimentation (CEEA) of the IGTP (from 2018). ember of Editorial Boards, and coordinator of institutional EU projects, and summer schools. She is very active in media, press, TV, radio about the COVID pandemic