Career Compass 2025

Ioannis Karagiannis is an epidemiologist working as a consultant with WHO EURO. After completing his fellowship, he was head of the Foodborne Diseases Unit at the National Public Health Institute in Greece before working as an EPIET coordinator and a UK-FETP senior scientific coordinator. He later worked as a field epidemiologist with the UK-PHRST and head of recruitment at the SIREN study in the UK before moving on to the Western Pacific Region Office and then the European Region Office of WHO to work with SARS-CoV-2 in the human-animal interface, food safety and the current global mpox outbreak. He has been the president of EAN since 2023.

Liza Coyer is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Public Health Service of the Utrecht region (GGDrU), the Netherlands. She holds an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a PhD on HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis and STIs, followed by a postdoc on ethnic inequalities in SARS-CoV-2 at the Public Health Service of Amsterdam. She completed her EPIET fellowship (cohort 2021) at the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority in Germany, while continuing to contribute to hepatitis C projects in Cameroon for PharmAccess Foundation. After a career break for travel, she worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization on meningitis and epidemic bacterial diseases. At GGDrU, she focuses on surveillance, outbreak preparedness and response, and research on zoonoses and healthy living environments. She also serves on the boards of the EPIET Alumni Network and the Dutch Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology Group.

Ewout Fanoy is a medical doctor and epidemiologist (EPIET MS cohort 2013) at the Public Health Service Utrecht region in the Netherlands. He previously held leading roles in public health, including at PHS Rotterdam-Rijnmond and as head of the Infectious Diseases Department at PHS Amsterdam. Alongside his extensive experience in outbreak management, Fanoy has a longstanding interest in scientific research. His work covers a wide range of infectious disease outbreaks, with particular contributions to scabies research. He has studied the transmission dynamics of Sarcoptes scabiei and has been actively involved in testing and implementing molecular diagnostics (PCR) for scabies. In addition, he has contributed to innovative studies on wastewater surveillance for emerging pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, measles and monkeypox virus. In addition to his public health practice and research, he currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Dutch scientific journal Infectieziektenbulletin.

Justine Schaeffer is a microbiologist and currently head of the outbreak investigation and control team at the Regional Health Agency in North-Eastern France. She was trained as a virologist and studied the immune response to viral haemorrhagic fever for her PhD. Deployed as a lab manager, she was involved in diagnostics and capacity building against Ebola and Lassa viruses in Western Africa. Her EUPHEM fellowship in the Austrian Health Agency started in 2019 and went through the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. After graduating, she joined Santé publique France (Public Health France) as an epidemiologist to work first on SARS-CoV-2 variants and later on the organisation of genomic surveillance in France. Three years later, she moved again to the Regional Health Agency where she manages a team of doctors and nurses in charge of infectious diseases investigation.

Louise Coole is the Director of the UK Field Epidemiology Training Programme. Following Medical and Public Health training she worked as a consultant in communicable disease control for 10 years before moving into a more epidemiology focused role in the North of England; leading a regional field epidemiology team which included supervising FETP fellows.  From 2016 to 2020 Louise also worked part-time for ECDC as a scientific coordinator for the EPIET/EUPHEM programme. In 2019 she took on the leadership of the UKFETP as it transitioned from an EPIET Associates Programme (EAP) to a stand-alone programme. Her current focus is on strengthening links between FETP programmes in Europe and internationally.

Emma Löf is an epidemiologist currently working as an Expert on Emergency Preparedness and Response at ECDC where she also is a member of the EU Health Task Force Coordination Team. Before joining ECDC in 2023 she worked at the Public Health Agency of Sweden as a Senior Epidemiologist with surveillance and response on Covid-19, Influenza and RSV as well as on Zoonotic diseases and Food and waterborne outbreaks. Emma is devoted to continuous professional learning and development and has served as supervisor, facilitator, and scientific coordinator within the ECDC Fellowship program from where she also graduated in 2019. Emma has a thorough background from the field of agriculture and animal health both by training and from working at the national governmental level. She also holds a PhD in Veterinary epidemiology.

Kassiani Mellou is a senior epidemiologist with MPH and PhD in Epidemiology. She has more than 23 years of working experience in public health. Currently, she serves as the Head of the Data Management Directorate at the Greek National Public Health Organization (NPHO). She has extensive experience in surveillance, epidemic intelligence, early warning systems, risk assessment, outbreak investigation, preparedness, and response. She has published more than 80 scientific papers and worked as an Early Warning, Alert and Response (EWAR) Consultant at the Health Emergency Information and Risk Assessment Team at the WHO Regional Office for Europe (April 2023 – August 2024). She has teaching experience on field epidemiology at under-graduate and post-graduate programs since 2002 and has been the ECDC National focal point for training and EPIET/EUPHEM supervisor since 2011. Since 2024 she has been the Director of the Greek FETP held at NPHO.