Professor Lucille Blumberg is currently a consultant in Infectious Diseases at ‘Right to Care’ South Africa. In her new role she will focus on creating a One Health programme within RTC and responding to health emergencies in South Africa and the region. She has specialist qualifications in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases. Her special interests are in neglected tropical diseases, emerging pathogens and epidemic –prone infectious agents. She has adopted a One Health approach to all of these over many years especially through collaborative work with zoologists, veterinarians and entomologists. In her next career she wants to come back as an animal health practitioner! In the interim she holds an honorary lectureship in the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Pretoria, South Africa and established a One Health collaborative project examining zoonosis in an agro pastoral community adjoining the Greater Kruger National Park. She was the recipient of the One Health Award in 2014 from World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) One Health Award.

Prof Blumberg has a long-standing association with various national and international journals including as an associate editor of the International journal of infectious Diseases and has recently been appointed Editor-in-Chief.

Until 30 September 2021, she was the Deputy Director at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), of the National Health Laboratory Service, and founding head of the Division of Public Health Surveillance and Response, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She headed the Epidemiology Division, which includes the units for Outbreak Response, Travel and International Health, Epidemiology and Surveillance, as well as the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training programme. She was the medical consultant to the Special Pathogens Unit on rabies and Viral Haemorrhagic fevers.. During her 20 years in the division she has responded to many communicable diseases outbreaks including Covid-19, cholera, influenza A H1N1 (p2009), rabies, Ebola, malaria, typhoid, listeria, diphtheria, measles and polio (Namibia). She currently holds an honorary position at the NICD supporting the division and also acts as the medical consultant to the Centre for Emerging, Zoonotic and Parasitic Diseases where her major focus is on malaria, rabies, viral haemorrhagic fevers, zoonotic diseases and travel – related infections.  She holds honorary positions in the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Stellenbosch and in the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Pretoria.

During the Covid-19 pandemic she established DATCOV, a national surveillance system for patients with COVID-19 who were hospitalized.  She was also the vice-chair of the WHO committee for the Review of the International Health Regulations during COVID-19 from September 2020 to May 2021.  She is currently a member of a number of WHO advisory committees including the scientific advisory group (STAG) for Neglected Tropical Diseases. From 2015 she was a member of the scientific advisory group for the WHO Blueprint for Research and Development for Counter Measures for Emerging Diseases.  She was recently appointed to the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards with Pandemic and Epidemic Potential (STAG-IH).

She is the past chair of the South African Malaria Elimination Committee (SAMEC), and continues to serve on the subcommittee for chemotherapy and prevention. She is a past president of the Infectious Diseases Society of South Africa and a founding member of the Federation for Infectious Diseases Society of Southern Africa.

 

 

Kalifa Bojang is the head of the paediatric department of the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital and a Senior clinical scientist at the Medical Research Council Unit in The Gambia. Kalifa Bojang studied medicine at University of Zambia, qualifying in 1984. He trained in paediatrics at Guys Hospital, London; Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London and St Luke University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium. He undertook a PhD with Sir Brian Greenwood at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Hygiene on the chemoprevention of anaemia. He is vice-president of The Gambian Chapter of the West African College of Physicians and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, UK. Since January 2011, he has been seconded to University of The Gambia to head of the paediatric department of the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital. He is a member of the WHO IVR/Global Malaria Programme Joint Technical Expert Group (JTEG) on Malaria Vaccines Entering Pivotal Phase 3 Trials.

Niaz Banaei received his medical education from Stanford University. During medical school he developed a passion for infectious diseases diagnostics while conducting diagnostic research on Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Mexico and South Africa. After medical school he completed residency training in Clinical Pathology at the University of California, San Francisco. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in tuberculosis pathogenesis at the New York University. He then moved back to Stanford University to join the department of Pathology and serve as Medical Director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at Stanford Health Care. He is currently a Professor of Pathology and Medicine (Division of Infectious Diseases & Geographic Medicine) at Stanford University and is the Director of Stanford Clinical Microbiology Fellowship and Stanford Global Health Diagnostics Fellowship. He is also the associate program director for Clinical Pathology training program. His research interests include (1) development, assessment, improvement, clinical impact of novel infectious diseases diagnostics and (2) immunopathogenesis of M. tuberculosis. He was the recipient of several teaching awards. He has authored over 170 scientific articles and holds a number of invention patents.His research interests include (1) development, assessment, and improvement of novel infectious diseases diagnostics, (2) enhancing the quality of C. difficile diagnostic results, and (3) characterization of M. tuberculosis virulence determinants.

William Brieger is a Professor in the Health Systems Program of the Department of International Health at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and also serves as JHPIEGO’s Senior Malaria Specialist. William is a Certified Health Education Specialist and has a Doctorate in Public Health (DrPH) in international health from the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and a Masters in Public Health (MPH) from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Bill taught at the African Regional Health Education Center at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, from 1976 to 2002. He is internationally renowned for his expertise in the social and behavioral aspects of tropical disease control and prevention, with special emphasis on malaria, onchocerciasis and guinea-worm.

From 1976-2002 he was based at the African Regional health Education Center in the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He continued to work on projects in Nigeria and other African Countries through Jhpiego and other USAID grantees. My major research focus developed from my time in Nigeria and includes learning about the social, cultural and behavioral aspects of health and illness, especially in tropical contexts with an emphasis on programs designed around primary health care, community participation and health education. He endeavored to learn about health and health care from the community’s perspective in order to develop communication bridges between consumers and providers, to learn appropriate community participation mechanisms and to strengthen community capacity during intervention research. His teaching brings these experiences to the learners through online courses at JHU as well as Coursera.

Some projects include 1) community directed malaria control in Nigeria and Burkina Faso, 2) Strategies to eradicate guinea worm and 3) factors associated with annual compliance with ivermectin treatment for the control of onchocerciasis. He has served on various technical advisory committees dealing with child health and tropical diseases. He has provided technical assistance on malaria programs through various USAID Implementing Partners in the areas of malaria elimination, social and behavioral change, training and capacity building, and a health systems approach to assessing and planning malaria programs.

Moupali Das, MD, MPH, is an Executive Director, HIV Clinical Research, in the Virology Therapeutic Area at Gilead Sciences, where she leads the PrEP clinical drug development program, including evaluating the safety and efficacy of lenacapavir, a novel long-acting, twice yearly, subcutaneous injection for HIV prevention. Her responsibilities also include expanding the populations who can benefit from F/TDF and F/TAF for PrEP. She has led high-performing teams in academic medicine, public health, implementation science, and cross-functionally in drug development. She has successfully helped develop, implement, and evaluate how to better test, link to care, increase virologic suppression, and improve quality of life for people with HIV, and to prevent HIV in those who may benefit from PrEP.  During the COVID19 pandemic she assisted her colleagues in the remdesivir program, leading the evaluation of remdesivir use in pregnant women and children from the compassionate use program.

After completing her undergraduate degree in Biochemical Sciences at Harvard College, medical school and internal medicine residency training at Columbia University and New York Presbyterian Hospital, she came to University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) for fellowship training in Infectious Diseases and to University of California, Berkeley for her MPH in Epidemiology. She cared for HIV patients at San Francisco General’s storied Ward 86 clinic and attended on the inpatient ID Consult Service. She is recognized internally and externally for her expertise in epidemiology, public health, advocacy, and community engagement.

Prior to joining Gilead, Moupali developed a novel population-based indicator, community viral load (CVL), to evaluate the impact of treatment as prevention. Her CVL research was the basis for using viral suppression to evaluate the effectiveness of President Barack Obama’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy. She also served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Data Systems for Monitoring HIV/AIDS care. She has authored >60 manuscripts, presented at scientific conferences, policy forums, and for community and advocacy organizations. Her publications have been highly cited and garnered significant press coverage including in The New York Times and Nature.

Dr. Muhwa Jeremiah Chakaya, is a Professor, Global Respiratory Health, at the department of clinical sciences, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine & Technical Director and Chief Executive Officer, Respiratory Society of Kenya. Prof. Chakaya hails from Kenya where he was born and educated and where he practices and teaches respiratory medicine. He graduated from the University of Nairobi with a basic degree in medicine and surgery (MBChB) in 1985 and a master’s degree in internal medicine (M.Med) in 1992. He then went on to study lung medicine at the National Lung and Heart Institute, University of London at the Royal Brompton Hospital and at the Kyorin University Hospital in Tokyo, Japan.

Professor Chakaya worked as a TB and lung disease researcher at the Centre for Respiratory Diseases Research at the Kenya Medical Research Institute and later served as the TB Program Manager at the Ministry of Health between 2003 and 2006. At the international level, Professor Chakaya has held several positions including, Vice Chair of the Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board, Chair of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for TB (STAG-TB ) of the World Health Organization (WHO), Chair of the Global Fund’s Technical Review Panel (TRP) and President of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union).

Professor Chakaya is a founder member of the Respiratory Society of Kenya (ReSoK) and has remained closely engaged with this organization. He is a member of the Pan African Thoracic Society and serves in the executive committee of this organization. He has honorary teaching position at the school of medicine, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya. Dr Muhwa Chakaya was Chief Research Officer and Consultant Chest Physician at Kenya Medical Research Institute. He is also co-chair of WHO Guidelines Development group on Tuberculosis.

Thomas Eisele has a joint appointment as a Professor in the Departments of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and International Health and Sustainable Development at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the Director of the Center for Applied Malaria Research and Evaluation. His research focuses on malaria epidemiology and evaluating malaria control and elimination strategies. Areas of expertise include malaria epidemiology, evaluating the impact of malaria control/elimination strategies, and measurement of malaria intervention coverage and malaria health outcomes.

His current research focuses on measuring the impact of malaria control and elimination strategies with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prof Eisele has led or been involved with generating evidence of the impact of new malaria tools using large-scale community randomized controlled trials, including the evaluating the impact of insecticide treated mosquito nets in Kenya, and more recently mass treatment strategies and attractive targeted sugar baits against malaria in Zambia.

Dr. Eisele is a member of the Roll Back Malaria Monitoring and Evaluation Reference Group, the Technical Expert Group on Surveillance, Monitoring and Evaluation for the WHO Global Malaria Program, and was previously a Malaria Expert Group member of the WHO Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group. Prof Eisele currently serves as a focal point for the Global Fund Technical Review Panel for malaria. He has served as a member of the RBM Surveillance Monitoring and Evaluation Reference Group, the WHO Global Malaria Program Technical Expert Group on Surveillance Monitoring and Evaluation, the Malaria Eradication Research Agenda (MalERA I and II), the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group, as well as numerous evidence review groups for the WHO.

Bradley Hare, MD is Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and Medical Director, UCSF HIV/AIDS Division at San Francisco General Hospital. He conducts patient-based research on a variety of topics important to HIV clinical management, the inspiration for which comes directly from observations in the clinic. Current areas of focus include HIV and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) co-infection, where he studies the epidemiology, natural history and treatment of acute hepatitis C infection, the use of novel agents in the treatment of HIV-HCV co-infection, and models of HCV treatment in primary care settings. He also conducts research on HIV testing in medical settings such as the Emergency Department, linkage to care after HIV testing, and implementation of a patient-centered medical home for people aging with HIV infection.

Davidson Hamer, MD, FACP, FIDSA, FASTMH, FISTM is a Professor of Global Health and Medicine at the Boston University School of Public Health and Chobanian & Avesidian School of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor of Nutrition at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Dr. Hamer, a board-certified specialist in infectious diseases with a particular interest in tropical infectious diseases, has extensive field experience in neonatal and child survival research including studies of micronutrient interventions, maternal and neonatal health, malaria, pneumonia, and diarrheal diseases. During the last 20+ years, he has supervised and provided technical support to more than 50 studies in developing countries that evaluated interventions for improving neonatal survival, improving access for pregnant women to emergency obstetrical care, treatment and prevention of malaria, HIV/AIDS, micronutrient deficiencies, diarrheal disease, and pneumonia. Dr. Hamer received a MD from the University of Vermont College of Medicine and a BA in biology and French from Amherst College. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, Infectious Diseases Society of America, American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and the International Society of Travel Medicine.

Dr. Hamer currently has active projects in Bangladesh, Zambia, and the United States. Major current projects include neonatal sepsis prevention using prebiotics and probiotics in Bangladesh; nutritional status of adolescents in Zambia; and a prospective cohort study that includes a biobank of US immigrants with Chagas disease. In addition, Dr. Hamer is the Surveillance Lead for the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network, a global network of 70 sites in 31 countries that conducts surveillance of emerging infectious diseases using returning travelers, immigrants, and refugees as sentinels of infection (https://geosentinel.org).

Anthony David Harries is an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Senior Advisor at The International Union Against Tubercuolsis and Lung Diseases. Since 2008, Dr Harries had been Senior Advisor and Director of the Department of Research, which includes the Centre for Operational Research (COR) and SORT-IT courses. He is a physician and a registered specialist in the United Kingdom in infectious diseases and tropical medicine and spent over 20 years living and working in sub-Saharan Africa. In Malawi he served the Ministry of Health as National Advisor on both TB and HIV, with responsibility for scaling up antiretroviral therapy there. In 2008, he joined The Union, where he has launched a successful training programme in operational research, among other achievements. In 2002 Prof Harries was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to work in TB in Africa. He is also an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the author of hundreds of published papers on TB, HIV/AIDS, tropical medicine and the impact of operational research.

Diane Havlir, MD is a UCSF Professor and Chief of the HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine Division at ZSFG, home to world-renowned HIV research and Ward 86 clinical program. She is also the Associate Chair of Clinical Research in the Department of Medicine, Principal Investigator of the Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health (SEARCH) Collaboration, Director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute (ARI), and serves as Robert L. Weiss Memorial Chair for HIV/AIDS Research. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019.

Dr. Havlir was a resident at UCSF when the AIDS epidemic emerged in the 1980s, and has cared for HIV patients and conducted research—transforming national and international guidelines ever since. She is a long-standing NIH-funded investigator with over 400 publications including in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and other high impact journals. Dr. Havlir was a Co-founder and continues as Co-chair of San Francisco Getting to Zero (GTZ), a citywide consortium with a goal to eliminate new HIV infections and deaths. Dr. Havlir has been very active globally via leadership roles in the World Health Organization (WHO), having chaired the HIV global drug resistance surveillance network, and the HIV-TB working group. She co-chaired the WHO HIV treatment and prevention global guidelines, and Chaired the United Nations AIDS Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, which provides high-level guidance on global action to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The overall goal of her research is to develop therapeutic and prevention strategies to respond to global infectious disease pandemics: HIV, TB, and COVID-19. Antiretroviral therapy—for prevention or treatment—is one of the greatest successes in medicine, yet we have not fully used it to eliminate HIV or its complications such as tuberculosis (TB). In the first SEARCH study, Dr. Havlir and her team showed that a multi-disease, patient-centered approach to HIV testing and treatment reduced HIV incidence, HIV-associated tuberculosis and HIV-associated mortality, while improving population-level control of hypertension in a NIH-funded 320,000-person cluster-randomized study in rural East Africa. She continues towards her goal to accelerate the end of AIDS through the SEARCH-Sapphire study, which is testing an innovative “Community Precision Health” strategy which uses a multi-disease approach to incorporate AI and machine learning into delivery systems on a path to universal healthcare.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Havlir established the city-community-academic partnership Unidos en Salud, which provided low barrier test-and-respond and vaccine services to thousands of persons and tracked epidemiologic trends in the Mission district of San Francisco. This collaboration with the Latino Task Force, CZ Biohub, SFDPH and BayPLS is now studying molecular epidemiology of circulating respiratory viruses and prototyping new approaches to provide vaccine, testing and treatment services to the disproportionately affected Latinx population.

Dr Ajay Kumar currently works as the Deputy Director (Center for Operational Research) of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease and also leads the operational research initiatives of the South-East Asia Regional office. He is actively involved in conducting and publishing operational research in TB, HIV and Diabetes Mellitus. He organizes and facilitates many international and national courses on operational research and mentors young researchers across the globe (India, Asia, Africa, Europe and South Pacific).

Jay A. Levy, MD, is Professor in the Department of Medicine and Research Associate in the Cancer Research Institute at UCSF. He is director of the Laboratory for Tumor and AIDS Virus Research at UCSF. In his early work, Dr. Levy discovered xenotropic viruses that introduced a new paradigm in virology. During the past 30 years, Dr. Levy and his staff have dedicated their efforts to research on AIDS. In 1983 he independently discovered the AIDS virus, HIV, which he originally called the AIDS-associated retrovirus (ARV). He pioneered heat-treatment studies that demonstrated how to heat-inactivate HIV in clotting factor preparations. Dr. Levy is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Microbiology. He was given the Award of Distinction by the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR).

Dr Luetkemeyer is an assistant professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and an attending physician at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) where she specializes in HIV/AIDS. Her clinical responsibilities include outpatient services at the San Francisco General Hospital HIV clinic as well as inpatient services on the HIV/AIDS, general medicine, and infectious diseases consult services. Dr Luetkemeyer directs the HIV Clinical Trials Group at SFGH, which conducts investigator-initiated and industry HIV trials. She is a site investigator for the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). Her research interests include HIV and tuberculosis coinfection, development of novel tuberculosis diagnostics, and HIV and viral hepatitis coinfection.

Helen McShane is Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University, Nuffield Department of Medicine;

• Director, Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre
• Deputy Head, Medical Sciences Division
• Honorary Consultant Physician

She leads the TB vaccine programme at Oxford University and is working on a BCG challenge model. MVA85A, the original new TB vaccine developed at Oxford and made by Dr McShane during her PhD, was the first new TB vaccine to enter into clinical trials in 2002.

Since 2002, her group has conducted a series of clinical trials in the UK, The Gambia, South Africa, Senegal and Uganda, to investigate the safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of candidate TB vaccines, including MVA85A (recombinant modified vaccinia Ankara expressing antigen 85A) and ChAdOx1 85A (chimp adenovirus expressing antigen 85A) (both developed at the Jenner), and a number of industry partners’ vaccines. MVA85A and ChAdOx1 85A are used as boost vaccines for BCG-primed subjects; heterologous prime-boost vaccination regimens provide an effective way to induce high levels of cellular immunity, while the inclusion of BCG in a new regimen allows the retention of the protective effects of BCG in childhood against severe disease. Both vaccines have been shown to be safe and immunogenic in healthy adult volunteers. MVA85A has been further studied in M.tb latently infected individuals, and HIV-infected individuals, and the vaccine is safe and immunogenic in these groups. Successful healthy adult clinical trials were followed by age de-escalation studies that demonstrated safety in children and infants.

Francois Nosten is Professor in Tropical Medicine at Oxford University, Nuffield Department of Medicine. He is also the Director of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit in Thailand. His work concentrates on malaria and he has conducted the largest ever drug trials in malaria in an area which has the world’s most drug-resistant parasites, including a detailed study of the SPf66 malaria vaccine. Recent studies have concentrated on the efficacy and effectiveness of combinations anti malarial therapy. Dr Nosten has also investigated malaria prophylaxis and antimalarial treatment in pregnancy and the identification of thiamine deficiency (beri-beri) as a major cause of infant mortality amongst Karen refugees. His team is now leading the efforts to eliminate artemisinin resistant P.falciparum from eastern Myanmar. SMRU is also involved in the treatment of tuberculosis in the population living on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Dr. Edward A. Nardell is a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). He is also an associate professor in the Departments of Medicine, Environmental Health and Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard Medical School.

He received his medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine. He then completed a residency at Hahnemann University Hospital, followed by fellowships in pulmonary disease at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Medical Center (formerly Boston University Medical Center). He is board certified in internal medicine and pulmonary disease.

The author of over 110 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Nardell is a prominent researcher of multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), with a particular focus on airborne TB transmission and control. He is currently studying the transmission of MDR-TB and the effectiveness of various control interventions in several research projects funded by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. He is also involved in a 5-year Fogarty Innovation Grant that uses new technological approaches to airborne infection control to train architects, engineers and physicians in air disinfection research in Peru, South Africa, and other high-burden countries. He is actively developing more efficient and inexpensive ultraviolet germicidal irradiation fixtures and a new environmentally-safe chemical vapor that may reduce airborne transmission.

Dr. Nardell has served as president of both the Massachusetts Thoracic Society and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD), North American Region. He is also the incoming chair of the IUATLD Tuberculosis Section, Paris, and the recipient of the Chadwick Medal of the Massachusetts Thoracic Society.

Dr. Robert D. Newman is a pediatrician and currently Director of AMP Health, a public-private partnership to improve health systems and outcomes by collaborating with governments to strengthen leadership & management capabilities, previously the Managing Director for Policy and Performance at the GAVI Alliance Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland. He oversees organizational strategy setting, market shaping, policy development, business planning, and monitoring & evaluation. Before joining GAVI, Dr. Newman was Director of the Global Malaria Programme at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva from 2009 to 2014. Previously, he was Deputy Chief for Science and Chief of the Program Implementation Unit in the Malaria Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He also served as the CDC Team Lead for the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), directing a staff of more than 45 public health professionals in Atlanta and 15 African countries. During the past decade, Dr. Newman has been dedicated to advancing the science of preventing malaria during pregnancy and infancy in sub-Saharan Africa, and served as the principal investigator for numerous epidemiological studies and clinical trials. From 1998-2000, Dr. Newman was Mozambique Country Coordinator for Health Alliance International, a non-governmental organization working on maternal-child health.

Previously, he was VP and Global Head of TB at Johnson & Johnson; CDC Cambodia Country Director, overseeing activities related to HIV/AIDS, TB, and health security; Managing Director for Policy and Performance at Gavi; Director of the Global Malaria Programme at WHO from 2009-2014. From 2000-2009, he was at the CDC Malaria Branch, serving as CDC team lead for the US Presidents Malaria Initiative from 2006-2009. He began his career studying Cryptosporidium in Brazil in the early 1990s, and worked as Country Coordinator of Health Alliance International in Mozambique in the late 1990s.

He has a BA in English Literature from Williams College, MD from Johns Hopkins University, and MPH from University of Washington. He completed a residency in Pediatrics at UW-Seattle Children’s Hospital (1996), and a National Research Service Award fellowship in General Pediatrics (1998). He has published 70 peer-reviewed articles on malaria and other infectious diseases.

Dr Mario C. Raviglione has been Director of the Global TB Programme at the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2003. He joined WHO in 1991 to work on TB/HIV research and TB epidemiology in Europe. He contributed to the development of the DOTS strategy in 1994, and set up the global drug-resistance surveillance project (1994) and the global TB surveillance & monitoring system (1995).

Mario has been Full Professor of Global Health at the University of Milan, Italy, since 2018 and co-director of the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Health Science (MACH). Between 1991 and 2017, he worked at WHO in Geneva where he was Director of the Global Tuberculosis (TB) Programme (2003-2017) and responsible for global policies and standards on TB care, control and research, while collaborating with more than 50 countries worldwide.

Mario has authored more than 350 publications on TB, AIDS, infectious diseases, COVID-19 and global health, and additional book chapters, guidelines and policy documents on the topics of infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS and TB in the most influential health journals and books, including in the last five editions of the prestigious Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. He is among the top 10 most cited authors in the TB field. He is editor of the 3rd and 4th (2006, 2009) edition of “Tuberculosis – A comprehensive International Approach”, a landmark multi-author book, and associate editor of other books.. Mario provides BE Health with his active support and vital advice to develop resourceful health projects.

Neil W. Schluger, M.D., was named dean of the School of Medicine in July 2023. An internationally recognized pulmonologist, Dr. Schluger previously served as the Barbara and William Rosenthal Chair* of the Department of Medicine and professor of medicine at NYMC and director of medicine at Westchester Medical Center since 2020.

Since joining NYMC, Dr. Schluger has distinguished himself as a clinician, researcher and educator, leading a department of more than 425 faculty members and teaching more than 800 medical students and residents. In 2021, he took on the additional role of associate dean for clinical and translational research for the SOM.

Previously, Dr. Schluger served as chief of the division of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center; professor of medicine, epidemiology and environmental health sciences; director of the Population and Global Health Track for the Scholars Projects Program; and co-director of the Programs in Education and Global and Population Health for the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.

Dr. Schluger is a founder of the East Africa Training Initiative in Pulmonary Medicine (EATI). The two-year fellowship training program in pulmonary and critical care medicine, which recently marked its tenth anniversary, is the first training program of its kind in Ethiopia and the broader East African region. Before the launch of EATI, Ethiopia had only one pulmonologist for its 110 million people. EATI has, thus far, graduated 18 specialists, including two pediatric pulmonologists and two physicians from Rwanda and Tanzania, who have assumed leadership roles at hospitals across East Africa.

He has been a principal investigator in the Tuberculosis Trials Consortium, an international collaboration sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 25 years and was the chair of the consortium from 2000-2016. Dr. Schluger has been an author or editor of several editions of The Tobacco Atlas, the definitive work describing the extent and consequences of the global epidemic of tobacco use, published by Vital Strategies and the American Cancer Society. He. also serves as a member of the board of trustees at Vital Strategies, a global not-for-profit organization devoted to public health issues.

Dr. Schluger is the author of more than 200 articles, chapters and books. His work has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, and The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, among other leading journals. Dr. Schluger is an associate editor of The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Medicine. He is a past chair of the American Lung Association of New York and past chief scientific officer of the World Lung Foundation. Dr. Schluger was recently recognized by Crain’s New York Business as a 2023 Notable Health Care Leader.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Schluger rose to the occasion and became a voice in the media on re-infection, long-term symptoms and the use of hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19. He was an author of the lead article, “Observational Study of Hydroxychloroquine in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19,” published in The New England Journal of Medicine, May 7, 2020. Dr. Schluger used data from an observational trial he led where 1,400 COVID-19 patients were given hydroxychloroquine and showed that there was no evidence that the drug had any benefit of the patient’s conditions.

Board-certified in pulmonary disease and internal medicine, Dr. Schluger is a graduate of Harvard College and earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed a residency in internal medicine and served as chief resident at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York. He later completed a three-year pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship at The New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center.