Thematic sessions at ESCAIDE 2025

Laura Espinosa is an Epidemic Intelligence Expert at ECDC and a recently graduated PhD candidate at EPFL Digital Epidemiology Lab in Switzerland. She is a public health veterinarian with further specialisation in digital technologies and a certified Project Management Professional.

She has focused her career on public health from an international perspective, including experience in microbiology, epidemiology, epidemic intelligence, preparedness and response, food safety, animal health, climate change and vector-borne diseases, and AI and other technologies. She has been involved in ECDC activities in the past 9 years related to several public health events of international concern (Zika epidemic in the Americas, Ebola virus disease outbreaks in West Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo, and COVID-19 pandemic, among others).

In the past years, especially with her role as PhD candidate in the computational biology programme at EPFL, she has broadened her expertise on artificial intelligence and the implementation of machine learning and deep learning in public health, and on the leverage of social media for public health functions. She is currently leading the digitalisation of early detection of threats through artificial intelligence and other technologies at ECDC.

Dr. Sergio Consoli is a Project Officer and Senior Data Scientist within the Digital Health Unit of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Italy, focusing on advancing automated analytical methods used to extract new knowledge from data for applications in digital health and well-being. With a Ph.D. in Operational Research from Brunel University and a M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Catania, he has contributed significantly to data science and big data management and analytics, particularly during his tenures at the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Philips Research, and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). Sergio has published his research in several international journals, edited books, patent applications and leading conferences in the fields of his work. He has co-edited books on data science applications in healthcare and economics. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for Plos One, the Journal of Big Data, and the Interactive Journal of Medical Research.

Yannis Paschalidis is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Founding Professor of Computing & Data Sciences, and Director of the Hariri Institute for Computing at Boston University. He is the AI lead on the Biothreats Emergence Analysis and Communications Networks (BEACON) – a disease outbreak reporting system. He obtained a Ph.D. (1996) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His research interests lie in the fields of robust learning, optimization, autonomy, computational medicine, and computational biology. He has published a monograph and more than 300 refereed papers, and he has advised 39 Ph.D. theses. His work has been recognized with a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, several best paper awards, and an IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge Award. He was an invited participant and speaker at several National Academies symposia. He is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association, and a distinguished member of the IEEE Control Systems Society.

Prof Mary-Anne “Annie” Hartley leads the Laboratory for intelligent Global Health and Humanitarian Response Technologies (LiGHT). 

LiGHT is an international research group based jointly at EPFL (School of Computer Science) and Harvard (T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Ariadne Labs) with satellite presence at Ashoka University in India and the C4IR in Rwanda.

Her team works with NGOs and humanitarian response organizations like Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross to develop implementable AI-powered technology that provably improves healthcare in resource-limited settings and under-represented populations.

In her free time, Annie is a passionate lover-of-street-dogs and medical doctor and continues to work clinically in a volunteer capacity in her home country of South Africa.

Piotr Kramarz is a physician, with a PhD in immunology of viral infections, and eight years of clinical practice at a teaching hospital in the field of infectious diseases. During the period 1997−2000, he worked at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), first in the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) and then as a medical epidemiologist. Since 2007, he has worked at ECDC as a Deputy Head of the Unit and, since 2024, as the Chief Scientist. His research interests include burden of communicable diseases and vaccine-preventable diseases.

Sarah Earnshaw Blomquist is a member of the Social and Behavioural Science team at ECDC. With a background in political science and strategic communication, Sarah has more than 15 years of experience working in public health, vaccines and antibiotic resistance with social and behavioural science, communication, campaigns and partnership building. 

Sarah enjoys looking at issues from broad perspectives given the experiences she has had working in the public and private sectors, at technical and political levels, and in national, EU and international contexts. 

In her current role at ECDC, Sarah is project manager for the newly launched operational support for vaccination programmes including approaches from #socialandbehaviouralscience, a simple survey tool for diagnosing barriers to and facilitators of vaccination, and a library of almost 30 inspiring intervention examples for overcoming these barriers from across Europe.

Dr. Bolette Søborg is Deputy Director at the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, Statens Serum Institut (SSI). She is a medical doctor (MD, University of Copenhagen, 1999), specialist in public health medicine, and holds a PhD in infectious disease epidemiology (University of Copenhagen, 2010). She is currently completing a Master of Public Governance at Copenhagen Business School. 

Her academic and professional focus is on vaccine-preventable diseases, with a particular expertise in vaccine hesitancy. She has conducted seminal studies on parental attitudes to HPV vaccination, demonstrating how one-third of parents expressed hesitancy and identifying mothers and social media as decisive influences. 

Building on this research, Dr. Søborg co-led Denmark’s national campaign “Stop HPV – Stop Cervical Cancer” (later “Stop HPV – Get Vaccinated”), in collaboration with the Danish Cancer Society and the Danish Medical Association. The campaign’s evidence-based but emotionally resonant approach successfully rebuilt public confidence in HPV vaccination. Within a year, first-dose uptake among girls nearly doubled, and vaccine acceptance markedly improved—an achievement now highlighted internationally as a model for countering vaccine hesitancy.

Agnieszka Sochoń-Latuszek, Social and Behaviour Change Specialist in UNICEF Refugee Response Office in Poland. 

Agnieszka has a master’s degree in Decision Making Analysis and Behavioral Economics with more than 10 years of experience in working at international organizations at the national and headquarter level in different humanitarian context including emergency. Expert in audience, experimental research and comparative studies. 

In her most recent role in UNICEF Refugee Response Office, she has applied her knowledge and experience in Behavioural Science and research to promote social and behaviour change including vaccination, breastfeeding, education and mental health among affected refugee population.