Speakers at ESCAIDE 2024

Chris Dye trained as a biologist and ecologist (BA York) but postgraduate research on mosquitoes (DPhil Oxford) led to a career in epidemiology and public health. Based at Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 1982-96, he did research on bloodsucking insects as vectors of leishmaniasis, malaria and river blindness in Africa, Asia and South America, and on the role of domestic and wild animals as reservoirs of human infection and disease. In 1996, he joined the World Health Organization where he developed ways of analyzing the vast quantities of routine surveillance data collected by government health departments worldwide ─ to better understand and control tuberculosis, malaria, and Ebola, HIV, SARS and Zika viruses. As WHO Director of Strategy 2014-18, he served as science advisor to the Director General, oversaw the production and dissemination of health information by WHO press and libraries, and coordinated WHO’s work on health and the Sustainable Development Goals. He is now Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford University, a Fellow of The UK Royal Society, and of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences. His most recent book is Investing in Health and Wellbeing: When Prevention is Better than Cure (OUP 2024).

Katarzyna Drążek-Laskowska is the Director of the Department of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Health in Poland. In 2022 she was appointed as the Plenipotentiary of the Minister of Health for the Continuation of Treatment Abroad for Ukrainian patients who came to Poland in connection with the armed conflict in Ukraine and who will continue treatment in other countries.  She was also elected to the WHO Executive Board for a term of 2024-2027, where she works to prioritise digital health, the fight against tuberculosis and the reconstruction of health care systems after crises. 

Lieke van Alphen studied Medical Biology at the Utrecht University, specialising in infection and immunity. She continued into a PhD at this same university and completed her thesis in 2008 on “the  virulence strategies of Campylobacter jejuni”. After a 3-year postdoc in the Szymanski lab at the university of Alberta (Canada) investigating the interaction of Campylobacter with bacteriophages, she trained as a Public Health Microbiologist during the EUPHEM fellowship at Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. Since then, she has been working as a member of staff at the Department of Medical Microbiology, Infectious diseases and Infectionprevention, Maastricht university Medical Centre. She specialised during a 2-year postgrad training as Medical Molecular Microbiologist, where she is head of the regional typing lab. Currently, her research work at the MUMC focusses on the spread of resistant bacteria and resistance genes and molecular epidemiology using next gen sequencing and rapid data sharing.

Caterina Rizzo, MD, is Full Professor of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at the University of Pisa (Italy). She started her academic career in January 2001 as a researcher at the Univeristy of Bari. Between 2006 and 2018 she was first lead researcher at the National Center for Epidemiology and Health Promotion until 2016, and from January 2017 at the Infectious Diseases Department of the National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità). From 2013 to 2021 she was appointed by the Ministry of Health as National Focal Point for the surveillance programmes on vector-borne diseases, influenza and alternate NFP for food-borne diseases coordinated by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm. From 2018 to 2022 she worked at the Innovation Unit of the Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù in Rome, and in May 2022 she resumed her position in the Italian University, moving to Pisa, where she is teaching Hygiene and Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the School of Medicine. Since 2021 she has been member of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) and of the NUCE (Nucleo permanente di coordinamento della comunicazione del rischio sanitario nelle emergenze). Her research activity has been focused on infectious disease epidemiology and prevention. She is has co-authored more than 200 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. 

André Charlett studied mathematics as an undergraduate and has postgraduate degrees in medical statistics leading to his first position as a medical statistician at the MRC Clinical Research Centre. He moved in the early 1990s to take up the role of principal statistician within the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre at Colindale. He was initially involved in establishing hospital infection surveillance systems within England and retains an interest in combatting the rise of antimicrobial resistance.  

For the past twenty years he has headed the Statistics, Modelling and Economics Division in which staff develop and deploy analytical methodologies focused on infectious disease control and elimination programmes, in addition to working on collaborations with academic and UKHSA colleagues across numerous infectious diseases. He sits on SPI-M, the UK Government advisory committee on pandemic modelling, a group awarded the Weldon Memorial Prize by the University of Oxford for its collective responsive work during the COVID pandemic.  He has an academic appointment at King’s College, London, where he is currently investigating the role that the faecal microbiome plays in Parkinson’s disease.

Professor Mika Salminen, Ph.D., is the Director General of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). He has previously led the Public Health and Welfare department at THL, overseeing public health and welfare initiatives and the Health Security department, responsible for national vaccination programs, infectious disease surveillance systems, microbiological reference laboratories, and environmental health. 

He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki, a former member of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and currently at EU Commissions DG HERA’s scientific Advisory Forum. He is the Chair of the European Space Agency Planetary Protection Working Group. He has published widely on various infectious disease and public health topics.

Mika has actively contributed to the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) initiative and was intimately involved in developing the WHO led Joint External Evaluation process, fostering strong relationships with relevant organizations such as the WHO, US-CDC, and the World Bank. He led multiple IHR Join External Evaluation missions, including those of Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Mika played a pivotal role in leading the response efforts at THL. For his achievements he received multiple awards such as the Presidential Medal First Class of the Order of the Knights of the Finnish White Rose, the Helsinki Medal and the Leader of the Year Award. He is especially proud of being awarded the title of the Caricature figure of the year in 2021. 

Dr. Henao-Restrepo serves as the technical lead for the R&D Blueprint for Epidemics at the Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) in WHO. During her esteemed career at WHO, she was assigned to the Ebola Research and Development Team and coordinated the Ring vaccination trial in Guinea and Sierra Leone. In addition, she contributed to the expansion of immunization programs and served as the WHO global focal point for measles and rubella control efforts. Notably, she also worked in the implementation and evaluation of strategies to eradicate poliomyelitis and eliminate measles and maternal and neonatal tetanus.

Dr. Henao-Restrepo was born and raised in Colombia, South America. After receiving her Medical Doctor and Surgeon degree from the University of El Rosario in Bogota, Colombia, she received a Master’s degree in communicable disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Christian Drosten studied medicine in Frankfurt am Main/Germany. From June 2000, Drosten joined the virology department at Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg. His group focused on virus discovery and molecular diagnostics of tropical viral diseases. From 2007, Drosten became full professor and chair at the Institute of Virology at University of Bonn Medical Center. In 2017, he moved to the Charité-Universitätsmedizin in Berlin, where he is currently the Director of the Institute of Virology. He was a member of the German Ministry of Health’s International Advisory Board on Global Health from 2017-2019. Drosten co-discovered the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV), for which he developed the first diagnostic tests in 2003. He worked on Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) for which he resolved many aspects of the natural history of disease in humans and animals. In January 2020, his team developed the first SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test that was approved by the WHO and globally applied. His subsequent work focused on characterizing essential disease traits and diagnostic approaches in COVID-19. During the pandemic, he has been advising German federal and state authorities and was appointed to the European Commission's advisory panel on Covid-19. 

Nienke Beerlage-de Jong is an Assistant Professor of Technology for Planetary Health Behaviour, at the Technical Medical Centre of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. She also holds a guest appointment at the Medical Microbiology and Infection Prevention dept. of the University Medical Centre Groningen, the Netherlands.

Her research focuses on the interface between behaviour, technology and planetary health, much of it involving the participatory development, implementation, and evaluation of eHealth technologies to foster behaviour change in the face of the complex planetary health challenges.

In her work, she seeks to transcend disciplinary, sectoral, and national boundaries, integrating insights from e.g. behavioural science and infectious diseases, and fostering collaboration between academia, industry, and healthcare.

She coordinates and teaches bachelor- and master-level courses on eHealth at the University of Twente, for e.g. health sciences, technical medicine and biomedical engineering students. In addition, she is general chair of the international Supporting Health by Technology conference series, and co-editor of an international edited book on ‘eHealth Research, theory and development – a multidisciplinary approach’.

Maria Wessman is a medical doctor and epidemiologist, specialised in Public Health. She holds a Ph.D in Infectious Diseases and her research concentrates within the field of HIV and sexually transmitted infections. She currently works as the Head of section of Blood-borne and Sexually Transmitted Infections and Digitization of the Infectious Disease Surveillance, at the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Prevention at Statens Serum Institut (SSI) in Copenhagen, Denmark.

She graduated with a medical degree in 2009 and has a background as a clinical doctor, mostly working at the Department of Infectious Diseases of Hvidore Hospital in Copenhagen, before joining SSI in 2017.

Tomasz Sobierajski is a health scientist, sociologist, methodologist, social vaccinologist, sociomedical researcher, interpersonal and medical communication trainer, socio-urbanist, evaluator, university lecturer, head of the Sociomedical Research Center, and professor at Warsaw University. He is the creator of the multidisciplinary scientific sub-discipline of social vaccinology. He has authored dozens of scientific publications in sociology, sociomedical, public health, and vaccinology, and 5 scientific monographs and 5 textbooks for health care professionals. He designs and coordinates research projects for Polish and international public institutions, NGOs, and private companies. He performs scientific project research in cooperation with, among others: Warsaw Medical University, Silesian Medical University, National Institute of Public Health - National Institute of Hygiene, National Institute of Medicines, Poznan Medical University, and Ankara Üniversitesi and the University of Alabama. He also supports the business sector with social research and analysis and business ethics. For over a decade, he has trained medical personnel in patient communication. He trains in cross-biking and squash and is a marathon runner.