John Paget has worked as an infectious disease epidemiologist for the last 30 years, first at the World Health Organization in Geneva, then at the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health and, more recently, at the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (Nivel). He has a PhD in Epidemiology and has worked on the epidemiology and surveillance of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus in Europe for the past 20 years. He was an Associate Editor of BMC Infectious Diseases and is the Co-Chair of the Global Influenza Initiative.

A/Professor Pamela Palasanthiran is a paediatric infectious diseases specialist, co-Head of the Department of Immunology & Infectious Diseases, Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, Randwick, Australia and conjoint Associate Professor, University of New South Wales, Australia. Primarily a clinician with extensive experience in paediatric infectious diseases, her clinical and research focus are in areas of perinatal infections, in particular congenital and postnatal CMV and perinatal HIV. She has a strong interest in evidence based medicine and is an ardent advocate of guidelines to inform practice. She contributes to a range of local, national and international guidelines in areas of infectious diseases including congenital CMV. She is the lead editor/author of the widely used set of national algorithmic guidelines on the Management of Perinatal Infections, a resource for the Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases (ASID). https://www.asid.net.au/documents/item/368

I completed my medical school at Université Paris-Sud (France) and obtained my MD degree in 2012, and my Pediatric residency at Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (France) in 2018. I trained during 2 years (2019-2021) as a fellow in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Department at the CHU Sainte-Justine, Montréal (Canada). Therefore, I learnt a lot about and from the COVID-19 pandemic during my second year of fellowship. I came back to work in Lyon (France) at Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant, as a PID consultant in the Pediatric Emergency Department. I also have a particular interest in Medical Pedagogy, with a year (2015-2016) in Jiao Tong University, Shanghai (China), working as a full teacher among the medical education team of the “Filière Francophone". Furthermore, I am now, in parallel, enrolled in a Master in Medical Education in Dundee (Scotland).

Moderna, Inc.

Professor Vana Papaevangelou, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Athens School of Medicine. Professor Papaevangelou’s main clinical and research interests include vertical transmission of infections (such as HBV, HCV, and CMV) as well as the epidemiology of vaccine-preventable diseases like hepatitis A & B, varicella, and measles. Professor Papaevangelou has published more than 120 papers in peer reviewed journals, with an h-index of 29 and more than 2,500 citations.

Dr Cihan Papan studied medicine in Innsbruck, Austria and Paris, France and graduated in 2010. He completed his specialization in paediatrics at Hauner Children’s Hospital in Munich, Germany in 2016, after which he did a fellowship in paediatric infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Germany. Currently, Dr Papan is pursuing his training in clinical microbiology at Saarland University, Germany. He serves as a member to the Committee for Education in the ESPID. As a member of ESGAP and the ESCMID Evidence Review Group, Dr Papan is also actively involved in guideline development for ESCMID. His research interests include host biomarkers and their clinical utility in differentiating bacterial from viral infections, whole-genome sequencing-based pathogen diagnostics, and conducting and assessing antimicrobial stewardship interventions in various healthcare settings.

Dr Parellada, MD, PhD, Vaccine Outcomes Research Director for Latin America, works in the Center for Observational and Real-World Evidence of MSD. She is based in São Paulo, Brazil. She is a healthcare professional with a demonstrated history of working in academic institutions and pharmaceutical industry. Her research interests include epidemiology, HTA, HEOR, real-world evidence, market access, regulatory and policy activities. Dr. Parellada has twenty-five years of pharmaceutical industry experience in different therapeutic areas (women´s health, primary care and vaccines) and divisions (medical affairs, scientific project management and HEOR). Her background includes active participation in planning and execution of pre-launching and life cycle management of products/ vaccines as part of cross-functional teams. Dr Parellada received her medical degree in 1993 from Evangelica Medical School of Paraná (Brazil)and her “magna cum laude” PhD in Public Health Science in 2002 (Universidade de São Paulo/USP-Brazil). She has authored more than 100 publications and support creation of F2F and e-learning courses, digital newsletters/ websites, and biomedical journal. She carried out health economics courses about health technology assessments in IECS, ISPOR, UNICAMP and business model innovation program at Harvard Business School.

After studying Natural Sciences and Medicine at Cambridge University, Dr. Parry trained in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology in the UK and Tropical Medicine in Malawi and Vietnam. He has specialist accreditation in Clinical Microbiology. Dr. Parry is a Consultant Microbiologist at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and Royal Liverpool University Hospitals in Liverpool and a visiting Professor at the Centre for Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford and the School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan.

Dr Patel is a Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology Consultant working at Southampton Children’s Hospital, UK. His main areas of interest are outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) and antimicrobial stewardship. He is the Officer for Stewardship and Surveillance for the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) and chairs the paediatric network of the ESCMID Study Group for Antimicrobial Stewardship (ESGAP). He also leads the Healthier Together initiative programme in Dr Wessex, which, through the implementation of consistent management and effective safety netting, has significantly reduced primary care antimicrobial prescribing.

Manjiri Pawaskar is pharmacist by clinical training and has PhD is health services research. She has over 14 years of experience in health economics and outcomes research in pharmaceutical industry and academia. She has proven track record of working in different therapeutic areas leading to publications in journals and conference presentations.

Helen is a Clinical Lecturer in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London. Her research interests are in congenital infection and immune ontogeny, and in understanding the role of immune activation in driving or inhibiting infections in young and immunosuppressed children. Her PhD examined the influence of HIV and ART-strategies on thymic and naïve B-cell output, HIV-specific antibody responses and peripheral HIV-1 proviral DNA reservoirs using stored samples from the Children with Early Antiretroviral Therapy (CHER) trial in South Africa. On-going work in this area builds on understanding immunological health in perinatally-acquired HIV, and the role of subclinical co-infection with viruses such as EBV and CMV, and associated increased morbidity and mortality in this vulnerable population. The theme of Helen’s Lectureship is exploring the host-immune response to cytomegalovirus in infants and immunosuppressed children and adolescents. Projects include developing improved diagnostics for congenital CMV, and understanding transcriptomic biomarkers associated with poor neurodevelopmental outcomes.