Dorottya earned her MD and PhD in clinical medicine from Semmelweis University of Medicine in Hungary. Holding postdoctoral fellowships at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children's Hospital and Columbia University, she has 10+ years of experience in translational medicine ... pediatrics, gastroenterology, microbiology, and clinical metagenomics. She led cutting-edge clinical trials on fecal microbiome transplantation and developed a multicenter research program to understand the role of the gut-brain axis in the integrative neuroscience field. Currently, Dorottya is the Chief Medical Officer at Biotia, a NYC-based startup focusing on rapid infectious disease diagnostics, surveillance, and prevention of hospital-acquired infections powered by artificial intelligence.

Matt entered the research field over 20 years ago as a lab animal technician at the TSI/Mason contract research facility. He has worked at both contract facilities such as TSI and OREAD Biosafety as well in industry at Pharmacia, Pfizer, and Sanofi-Aventis. During that period he ... has performed a variety of surgical procedures including device implantation, transplants, orthopedic defect, ocular and vascular implants, cardiac surgery, and brain and spinal procedures. His experience ranges from mice and rats to non-human primates and livestock. In addition, he holds four patents for novel surgical devices and implants and has been training technicians, scientists, veterinarians, and physicians in surgical techniques and procedures for over 15 years. Outside of the surgical realm, he has been a study director, sonographer, Safety Pharmacology scientist, and manager. Currently Matt supervises a team of technicians and surgeon-technicians at Genzyme who support the Boston hub and perform over 1250 surgical procedures a year. Matt was also on the board of directors for the Academy of Surgical Research for over ten years, serving as their program chair for three of them as well as educational chair for two. Currently he is the program chairman for the New England branch of AALAS.

Dr. Gaya Amarasinghe is a biochemist, known for his contributions to defining mechanisms of viral replication and host-pathogen interactions for several prototype viruses. He began his research training at the Rockefeller University while completing his undergraduate degree at ... the City College of New York (CCNY). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and completed postdoctoral training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He began his independent career at the Iowa State University. Subsequently, he relocated to the Washington University in St. Louis where he is currently the Alumni Endowed Professor of Pathology and Immunology. Dr. Amarasinghe leads a research group that includes a diverse group of trainees. His multidisciplinary research and training efforts are centered around biochemical characterization at the host pathogen interface to define molecular mechanisms. These studies also afford opportunities to identify diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities.

Stephen S. Morse, Ph.D., is Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where he also serves as Director of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology certificate and as chair of the Columbia University Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) ... He was founding Director of the CDC-funded "Center for Public Health Preparedness" (2000-2005). Before coming to Columbia, Dr. Morse was Assistant Professor (virology) in The Rockefeller University (1985-1995), and Program Manager for Biodefense at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) from 1995 to 2000. He was appointed in 2014 to the U.S. government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). His research interests focus on infectious disease surveillance, and the epidemiology and assessment of emerging infectious diseases, including influenza. He was Chair of the NIH "Conference on Emerging Viruses" (1989), for which he originated the concept of emerging viruses/infections, was founding chair of ProMED (the Program to Monitor Emerging Diseases, best known for originating outbreak reporting on the Internet in 1994); and served on the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health (1990-1992), and chaired its Virology Task Force. His book Emerging Viruses (Oxford University Press, 1993) was selected by American Scientist as one of "The Top 100 Science Books of the [20th] Century". He was a founding member of the National Academies' "Forum on Emerging Infections" (later renamed the "Forum on Microbial Threats"), a founding section editor of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, former Editor-in-Chief of the Pasteur Institute's virology journal, and global co-Director of PREDICT (a USAID project to strengthen global capacity for surveillance and detection of new infectious disease threats) from 2009 to 2014. He is currently an Associate Editor of Disaster Medicine & Public Health Preparedness, and serves on the Editorial Board of several journals, including Health Security and Viral Immunology. He also serves on committees at the National Academies of Sciences and the World Health Organization (WHO), including the WHO Expert Group on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Planning in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Academy of Microbiology, the American College of Epidemiology, the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York Academy of Sciences (and was Chair of its Microbiology Section), and other professional societies, and is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received his Ph.D. (in microbiology) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wendy Mok is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at UConn Health. Wendy obtained her PhD in biochemistry from McMaster University and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University before starting her own group. Her lab's ... research centers on the phenotypic causes of antibiotic treatment failure, specifically focusing on how bacterial persisters in clonal populations recover and resuscitate following treatment with topoisomerase inhibitors. By targeting enzymes that bacteria depend on to withstand this class of drugs and repair antibiotic-induced damage, her group aims to reduce the survival of persisters and resistance development in their progenies. In addition to running her lab, Wendy is also an editorial board member for Communications Biology (Nature Portfolio).

Alexis Kaushansky, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, Adjunct Associate Professor of Global Health. Her research laboratory is part of the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research at Seattle Children's Research Institute. She ... received her BS in chemistry from Harvey Mudd College in 2004, and her PhD in biochemistry from Harvard University in 2010. During her PhD, she trained with Dr. Gavin MacBeath, where she was fortunate to work as part of an interdisciplinary team that included chemists, computer scientists and biologists to develop protein array technology and apply this approach to understanding the molecular changes that occur in cancer. As a postdoctoral scientist, she shifted gears to study host parasite interactions between the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium and its mammalian host during its time in the liver. In 2015, she started her independent research laboratory. The Kaushansky lab focuses on discovering how pathogens, such as malaria, interact with their human host and using this knowledge to eliminate infection. Outside of work, she enjoys running, cooking, traveling and debating current events.

Luis R. Martinez, Ph.D., MBA is an associate professor at the University of Florida. His research focuses on elucidating the mechanisms of fungal brain invasion and colonization in immunocompromised individuals. Dr. Martinez is well-published and -NIH funded. He serves on the ... editorial boards of mBio and Infection and Immunity. Dr. Martinez is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Microbiology, the International Society for Human & Animal Mycology, and the Medical Mycological Society of the Americas.

Daisy Leung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. She earned a BA in Biology from Amherst College (Amherst, MA) and a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from UT Southwestern ... Medical Center (Dallas, TX). Her current research is focused on developing a mechanistic understanding of host-pathogen interactions that contribute to viral pathogenesis through immune evasion. She uses a multidisciplinary approach to characterize select non-segmented, negative sense RNA viruses, including pneumoviruses and filoviruses, to identify critical targets that can be used as a basis to develop therapeutics or vaccine candidates.

Dr. Fernandez-Sesma is currently a professor with tenure in the department of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) in New York, NY, USA. She is interested on the modulation of innate immunity by viruses of human health interests, such as dengue (DENV) ... influenza (IAV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Zika (ZIKV) and in the past year also SARS-CoV-2. Her group uses mainly primary human systems, such as dendritic cells (DCs) and macrophages as well as primary lung epithelial cells and human tonsils for these studies combining molecular and immunological techniques. Their main goal is to understand the mechanisms of immune evasion used by these viruses to establish infection in humans. She currently participates in several multi-investigator projects on DENV and IAV that use OMICS technologies to study immune responses to infection. She also participated in several study sections for the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NIAD) and is currently a member of the Scientific Council of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID) at NIH/NIAID. Dr. Fernandez-Sesma is also the Chair of the NIAID Human Immunology Project Consortium (HIPC) Steering Committee. Dr. Fernandez-Sesma is also very dedicated to graduate education and mentoring. She co-directed the Microbiology Main Training Area of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at ISMMS from 2010 to 2020. She has co-authored numerous publications in Virology and Immunology journals and is on the editorial board of Journal of Virology, mSphere and PLoS Pathogens.In 2021 she was Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) and was also awarded the Jacobi Medallion from ISMMS.

Emily Hollister is the Director, R&D, Computational Biology for Diversigen. An accomplished microbial ecologist, her microbiome experience ranges from soils and biofuel production systems to the human microbiome and pre-clinical disease models. She leads a team of ... bioinformaticians and data scientists, dedicated to developing novel analytical solutions to support microbiome services and product development in the OraSure family of companies. Emily holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Environmental Plant Sciences from Texas A&M University. She completed her postdoctoral training in Molecular Microbial Ecology at Texas A&M University and has served on the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Children's Microbiome Center.

Megan Stanifer has been working in the field of molecular virology and cell biology for the past 19 years. Throughout her career, she has handled a diverse array of BSL2 and BLS3 pathogens including both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses with DNA and RNA genomes. During this ... time, she has investigated pathogen-host interactions from viral entry to antiviral innate immune modulation. Megan has developed state-of-the art microscopy approaches to investigate virus entry, fusion, and immune stimulation as well as methods to evaluate host responses to viral infection at the single cell level. Her PhD studies focused on understanding how the human polyomaviruses JCV and BKV established infection in human glial and kidney cell cultures. Following her PhD studies, she performed her first post-doctoral position in the laboratory of Dr. Sean Whelan, Harvard Medical school. During this time, she evaluated the entry and fusion of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). After a three-year post-doc at Harvard Medical School, Megan moved to Germany and joined the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Heidelberg. There, she started a second post-doc where she established the use of human, mouse and feline intestinal organoids to evaluate host/pathogen interactions. Using these models, Megan has been able to introduce methods to genetically modify these organoids and evaluate how they respond to a variety of pathogens. By establishing this system, she was uniquely poised to address questions of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis in primary cell cultures. Throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic she has been actively working with many national and international collaborators to use their human intestinal organoids to address questions of viral pathogenesis and the development of anti-viral strategies. Megan has recently relocated to the University of Florida as Assistant Professor and her lab is continuing to focus on how mucosal surfaces use interferons to combat virus infection.

Dr. Rupak Shivakoti received his MSPH in Public Health and his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the Johns Hopkins University. After a post-doctoral training in Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, he is now an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at ... Columbia University. His current research studies the relationship between microbiome, immunity and nutrition in individuals with HIV and TB. These projects are conducted in maternal-infant and adult populations from diverse international settings.

Dr. Ghosh received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology. Following her PhD, she pursued post-doctoral training at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth focusing on HIV acquisition and transmission in ... women. Currently Dr. Ghosh is an Associate Professor at the George Washington University, Milken Institute School of Public Health. Her research interests are focused on HIV in vulnerable populations, specifically immune responses and its regulation by sex hormones. Her current projects are funded by NIH and CFAR and include working with adolescent girls, postmenopausal women, women who have experienced sexual violence and trauma as well as transgender individuals.

Stefan Green, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, at RUSH University, and is also Director of the Genomics and Microbiome Core Facility (GMCF) and Director of Core Lab Services. He is a microbial ecologist and ... molecular biologist with an emphasis on the interrogation of biological systems through cultivation-independent molecular analyses of DNA and RNA samples. His current research is largely focused on the interactions of complex microbial communities with hosts across a range of experimental and diseases systems, including the study of effects of spaceflight on host-associated microbial communities. Green has over 25 years of experience in research and sequence data acquisition, and has over 175 peer-reviewed publications. As director of the GMCF, Green has established a shared-resource facility at RUSH University performing high-throughput RNA and DNA extractions, next-generation sequencing preparations including high-throughput amplicon sequencing, target capture, whole genome sequencing, shotgun metagenome sequencing, and quantitative PCR analyses. The GMCF also houses the Regional Innovative Public Health Laboratory (RIPHL), a public-academic partnership with the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH). In addition, Green serves as Director of Core Laboratory Services, managing all shared resource research facilities at Rush.