Sven Hammerschmidt received his PhD in Microbiology in 1996 (Hannover, Germany) and habilitated in Microbiology in 2002. From 1996 until 2003 he was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research. From 2003-2007 he was a Group Leader at the Research Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Würzburg. His first appointment as Associated Professor was 2007 for Cellular Microbiology at the Max von Pettenkofer-Institute for Hygiene and Medical Microbiology at the LMU Munich. In 2008 he took over the Chair of the Department Molecular Genetics and Infection Biology and was appointed as Professor for General and Molecular Genetics at the University of Greifswald in Germany. Sven Hammerschmidt is analyzing the host-pathogen interactions of pneumococci on the molecular and cellular level and research projects are especially focused on the identification and molecular characterization of bacterial adhesion and virulence factors, the immune evasion mechanisms and defence mechanisms against oxidative stress. Further research priorities are the elucidation of the cross-link between pneumococcal fitness and pathophysiological processes to define protein-based vaccine candidates as well as the epidemiology of pneumococci.

Laura Hammitt is an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she is the Director of Infectious Disease Programs at the Center for American Indian Health (CAIH). Prior to joining the faculty at Hopkins, Laura completed CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service training at the Arctic Investigations Program in Alaska, during which time she studied diseases that cause disproportionate morbidity and mortality in Alaska Native individuals including Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae. After completing a fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital in Colorado in 2008, Laura moved to Kilifi, Kenya where she worked as a pediatrician and epidemiologist, investigating the etiology of childhood pneumonia and the population impact of pneumococcal vaccination. She joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2011 and is currently based in southwest Colorado near the CAIH offices on the Navajo Nation and White Mountain Apache Tribal lands. Her research focuses on infectious disease epidemiology and the evaluation of interventions to reduce health disparities.

Dr. Bill Hanage is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. His research and teaching focus on the epidemiology of infectious disease and the evolution of infectious agents. He received his PhD from Imperial College London. Dr Hanage has made seminal contributions to the study of diverse pathogens, both bacteria and viruses, and has a special interest in evolution in response to interventions such as vaccination or antimicrobials - much of which has involved the pneumococcus. His research on the current pandemic has included modeling transmission in healthcare and the impact of vaccination in the context of variants, how fatality rates vary with age, and how the virus evolves in individual hosts. His awards include the Fleming Prize from the Microbiology Society and a young investigator award from the American Society for Microbiology. He has published more than 200 scientific articles and book chapters and is a regular contributor to popular media aiming to improve public understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Germaine Hanquet is a Belgian physician and epidemiologist working on vaccine and infectious disease studies. She specialised in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and obtained her PhD degree from Ghent university on methodological aspects of vaccine evaluation studies. After 13 years with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) around the world, she worked as epidemiologist for the Belgian Institute of Public Health (2001-08) where she set up a pneumococcal disease surveillance, for the Belgian Health Care Knowledge agency (2008-21) on vaccine cost-effectiveness studies and for P95 (since 2021) on pneumococcal studies. In parallel in her free-lance consultant work, she worked on pneumococcal surveillance systems for the ECDC (evaluation of national surveillance and the EU network SpIDnet/I-Move+ with EpiConcept), with the EMA on clinical evaluation of vaccines, and with other agencies on other vaccine studies. Her focus is the epidemiological methods for evaluating vaccine effects at the population level, and PCV in general.

Dr. Hiller’s research program examines microbial molecular mechanisms associated with disease. She studies how the human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae switches from commensal coexistence to pathogenesis. To address this overarching question, her lab focuses on three interconnected areas: cell-cell communication, adaptation to host-environments, and genomic variability and lineage-specific adaptations.