Nina van Sorge is Professor of Translational Microbiology at the Department of Medical Microbiology and Infection Prevention at Amsterdam UMCs, The Netherlands. Fundamental research in her group aims to clarify the molecular pathogenesis of bacterial infections to identify new strategies, including vaccines, to prevent and combat bacterial infections. She specifically focusses on the human pathogens Staphylococcus aureus and Group A Streptococcus (GAS) to elucidate how cell wall polysaccharides produced by these species impact recognition of by innate receptors and (vaccine-induced) antibodies. Prof. van Sorge is co-inventor for a patent on GAS vaccine development (WO 2013/020090 A3), which is currently in pre-clinical development by the pharmaceutical industry with financial support from Carb-X. In addition, she is Head of the Netherlands Reference Laboratory for Bacterial Meningitis (NRLBM), which performs the national surveillance for the vaccine-preventable diseases caused by Neisseria meningitidis, Haemophilus influenzae b and Streptococcus pneumoniae as well as non-vaccine preventable invasive diseases caused by Groups A and B Streptococcus. All received bacterial isolates are typed as relevant for that particular species, to provide insight into the incidence and molecular epidemiology of invasive bacterial infections in the Netherlands. Annually, the NRLBM receives, characterized and stores approximately 2,000 bacterial isolates from blood and cerebrospinal fluid, providing a comprehensive collection of clinically-relevant strains that spans several decades. This provides her with a unique position to connect molecular surveillance with fundamental research on invasive bacterial infections.